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by Michikazu Matsune and Naeem Mohaiemen
An insight into H.O.P.E. Archive #1. A series of photographs taken by Michikazu Matsune, accompanied by a chat between N. M. in Dhaka and M. M. in Vienna.
No. 235
| Naeem:
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At first I thought this guy was fondling the leg and I was thinking 'Hmm, that's kind of kinky'. The man who makes love to mannequin legs. Then when I looked closer, I realized he was doing a gold paint layer. I like the gold sheen, it's very Bladerunner.
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| Michikazu:
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Anything that shines, we shouldn't believe in the value. Goldrush. This will bring more money.
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| N:
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No, I'm not that aesthetic. I love shiny plastic surfaces. I am secret Takashi Murakami fan :)
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| M:
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What an outing!
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| N:
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Where is this picture taken?
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| M:
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Istanbul. I think it was a Sunday. Or do they have shops closed on Sundays? In Japan Sunday is the busiest shopping day ...
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| N:
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I don't think so in Istanbul. In Dhaka Friday is guaranteed holiday. Saturday sometimes holiday.
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| M:
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So Sunday is a calm day? Or a normal working day?
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| N:
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Normal. Interesting it was in Istanbul. Now I start imagining what clothes the models would wear.
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| M:
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Tell me.
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| N:
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Long skirts.
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| M:
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My wife is walking naked behind me now.
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| N:
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PICTURE!!! - Only joking, please forgive me, Mrs Matsune ...
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| M:
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This image has a certain sentiment. His own fashion is nice as well. By the way, Johannesburg is an empty hole underneath 'coz they have taken all the gold away ...
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| N:
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Is it for his own shop I wonder.
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No. 174
| Michikazu:
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Wish for camping? (Polizei is police in German as you know perhaps.)
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| Naeem:
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I love this image. It's my favorite. So stark. And of course I have a soft spot for Polizei. Esp, Euro police who treat me so nicely.
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| M:
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I wonder what this wagon is for. Do you see the word hobby? Which company is making this? VW or Mercedes?
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| N:
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Oh shit, I thought it said "Bobby", which is British slang for Police. I was thinking, hmm maybe it's some sort of Schengen police partnership. But it's a nice image, police at rest.
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| M:
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They make a camp fire and grill some sausages or something and sing together with a guitar. Nice sunset would be great. But I really wonder what they do in this ... This was in Kassel in front of the museum, I forgot the name.
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| N:
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Michi, all radical-chic rhetoric aside, I don't automatically think of Polizei as "enemy". Yes, had some bad experiences, but at same time, it's not helpful maybe to think of them as monolithic enemy. So actually one reason I like this image is because it shows police (maybe) at rest. What police do after work. Etc. Which is actually to me quite interesting. In this year's World Press Photo, the winner was a photo of a US Marine exhausted after a firefight (in Iraq or Afghanistan) and the judges said it captured exhaustion of the nation. I think those at rest, unguarded moments are very important even with structures that pose such an imposing face.
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| M:
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Yes. The world would be beautiful if police can be your friend. I saw a group of policemen and women eating ice cream together in Denmark when I was 18 and that surprised me, I remember. They were standing in a small circle and eating ice cream.
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| N:
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Yes, police are human, they eat ice cream too.
I think there were many moments in New York, in the Guiliani years, when I was very involved in the "against police brutality" movement, that we were guilty of the whole flattening. All police were racists after the Amadou Diallou killing. Our anger was intense. Of course it isn't so one-dimensional in the end. And the police also changed after the Diallou killing.
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No. 392
| Naeem:
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Where is this Peggy Guggenheim sign from? New York?
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| Michikazu:
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Venice.
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| N:
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I saw this and wondered if it was a "happening" a la Yoko. Venice.
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| M:
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Great that it is written with her name and not Guggenheim museum. It was just a sign that people could find the museum in this small labyrinth of Venice streets.
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| N:
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I was looking at the stencil that it covers up (much more interesting to me than the sign itself) and wondering what it was. Looks like a truncated footprint, or a bowler hat plus bowtie (bit like the magic talking man/question man hologram in Spielberg/Kubrick's A.I.).
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| M:
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I have no idea. Looks like a magician.
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| N:
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Also the letters right underneath, slightly obscured, read to me like WF = Workers' Federation, or World Wrestling Federation. I am completely free-associating, without basis and I know without connection. Partially I am a bit bored to comment on the PG sign. But the little squib inside one arrow is also interesting. Looks like an eye or a spaceship, no? Did you go to the show? Did you follow the sign? How was it?
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| M:
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I went there to see the museum and then the show was Beuys and Berney.
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| N:
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Ohh, that show. I saw it in Berlin. I liked the Barney small wall pieces actually. We are so trained to hate Barney, that it was kind of a relief to like the work actually. There's such a Barney-backlash in certain circles in NY, and after a while I found that backlash to be a bit tedious.
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| M:
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It makes me laugh when I imagine a museum officer painting the sign.
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| N:
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Actually it's kind of cute of a museum officer who did paint that sign. Super casual and cool. They could have easily made some pretentious official sign. If it's an accident, it's a cool accident. If deliberate, quite arch and successful. If mistake, well great example of found in translation.
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| M:
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So u imagine a female?
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| N:
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See, I sense a trap in that question. If I answer yes, I imagine it is female because of the loping curving style, and the playful colors, I am walking into some genderist PC nightmare :-) But imagine, if you will, a museum official spending hours laboring over these letters to make them look like the work of a young child. Which, by the way, is probably what they are, the work of somebody young and playful, and we are just hyper analyzing the image to death because, well, it's in front of us.
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| M:
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More funny is to imagine a middle age guy with his family home making this in his working hours in his changing room table..
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| N:
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Indeed.
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I imagine a giddy trapeze artist using his feet to stencil these letters. Oh wait, that's the Barney reference.
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| M:
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It would be nice to hang the photo in the museum. They should buy it. Don't you agree?
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| N:
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That's an idea. Blow it up and pitch it to them. Stranger things have happened. We live in the age of all meta all the time. All references and insider jokes. I'm also guilty of this.
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| M:
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How big should the print be ?
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| N:
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Is that a serious technical question? VERY BIIIIIG aight :)
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No. 381
| Naeem:
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This is great. Guernica in the middle of the most hideous kitschy pictures possible. And every genre is represented. The glowing pastoral on top. The snow covered mountain on right. The modernist flat surface on mid-left. The first year flower still life. life. And the pattern embroidery (by the way my mum makes those, so 'nuff respect to the embroidery posse). Where in the world is this, and did you buy the Guernica.
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| Michikazu:
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Athens. I regret I didn't. You can see Greece in the painting on the left.
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| N:
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Hey did you ever find out if that Guernica story was an urban legend or not? You know we started hearing this story that Guernica in UN was covered up when Colin Powell gave his buildup-to-iraq-saddam-has-WMD presentation. But it seemed so unlikely, now I wonder if it was true?
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| M:
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I haven't even heard of the story. Tell me more. Who said that? It sounds very much like just gossip.
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| N:
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When CP was giving presentations to the UN in buildup to Iraq war, there was a story that Guernica was covered up so it would not be backdrop during his presentation or press conference (can't recall which) since it is such a famous anti-war painting.
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| M:
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Is there any footage from the presentation?
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| N:
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But like most things in those frenzied days before the invasion, I was getting my news from truthout, alternet, and indy media (in total revulsion against mainstream media, which for me has somewhat abated). So I got it from those sources. Who knows now if it was true. Do not know, was just reminded. Whatever happened to Colin Powell. He's gnashing his teeth right now looking at Obama, "First black man in the White House? Wait that was supposed to be me!!"
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| M:
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Ok.
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No. 720
| Naeem:
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Let's talk about 720 bro, the butt shot!
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| Michikazu:
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Did you read the phrase?
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| N:
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I have no idea what it says. I was a bit distracted by the cheeks. Rosy shiny.
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| M:
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"Where you would like to come again."
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| N:
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Oh my God. Unbelievable. Impossible to imagine that ad in the US, and certainly forget Asia. What the hell is it an ad for? Oh I get it, tourism?
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| M:
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It seems that the surface around the string is worked out in Photoshop. A night club? Open 10am to 3am next morning.
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| N:
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So, it's not a Bahamas tourist poster? How is the surface worked out in Pshop? I cannot tell.
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| M:
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It is all too smooth for me.
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| N:
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Ah, so you suspect there was some hair or something?
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| M:
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Yes. What else?
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| N:
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Well, this is crazy but I kind of like the nasty subversion of such a sign.
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| M:
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What else can this ad be for?
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| N:
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It reminds me always that when we were young we used to go to the British Council Library and borrow (from their, at the time pitiful, video collection) the video compliation of BEST EURO ADS OF THE YEAR. And there would be crazy stuff in there! Crazy sexual stuff. So direct.
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| M:
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It works again.
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| N:
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I just saw that ad for Condoms, which would never ever fly in US ... Where the baby throws a tantrum and the father thinks "should have used condoms" – wow!
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| M:
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Crazy. I saw a jap tv show with a comedian called "hardgay".
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| N:
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I don't know what this is an ad for, but the first rule of advertising: grab them by the neck, make them notice, get them talking ... this fulfills all three.
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| M:
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This would be perhaps forbidden in the US.
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| N:
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Yeah man.
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| M:
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I mean "hardgay".
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| N:
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See in many ways the ad is offensive, right? But the US has such a puritan culture in some ways (side by side with libido culture exploding) that whenever I see that puritanism under attack, I cheer... even from a problematic ad.
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No. 255
| Michikazu:
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A home for a homeless. It is his home. You can see he is drying his pillow while he is away. (So a male person?)
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| Naeem:
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Is No.255 also in Kassel?
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| M:
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Paris. There is a certain paris beauty in this image. Our longing for Paris.
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| N:
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Why is his pillow wet?
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| M:
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It rained?
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| N:
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How weird, I kept looking at it and was wondering (before we talked) why pillow was next to it. I couldn't figure out the anatomical configuration.
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| M:
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The wind must come out. Or is this another carpet? I am not sure now. No. I think it was an opening from the metro.
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| N:
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Ah, the Metro.
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| M:
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Paris.
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No. 041
| Naeem:
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What is Freiheit? The Freeway?
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| Michikazu:
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Freedom.
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| N:
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Dohh Showing once again my superior command of romance languages. Is this by any chance a road named/built as part of post WWII US rebuilding? In West Berlin?
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| M:
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At least not in Berlin. I don't know the background story
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| N:
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This is almost too easy, nu? Road to Freedom, Cul De Sac to Freedom, Dead End, Road That Leads Nowhere, Road Map, Fork in the Road. The references and riff possibilities are endless. Iraq roadmap. Lynchian Highway (lost that is). The perfect metaphor for Iraq misadventures. Where was this sign?
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| M:
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Kassel, surely
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| N:
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It's a real sign or an art project?
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| M:
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A real sign. No art.
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| N:
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God, how fractured have we become that every time I see something that seems almost too-perfectly-ironic, I presume it's public art. We make signs, not art.
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| M:
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The sign behind is called "Graben" which means ditch. To dig etc.
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| N:
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Or "ditched her at the wedding altar and ran off with the best man".
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| M:
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"Grab" means grave. These two streets together!
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No. 812
| Michikazu:
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Photographs make the business. Right?
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| Naeem:
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:-)
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| M:
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The little chair beside, what kind of person should there be?
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| N:
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Yeah but weird thing is the mannequins right next to it are men, at least I presume from the bulge.
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| M:
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They are standing well. I mean the body. And the tree between is ripped? Or what happened?
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| N:
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This is of course a tried and true tradition. Beautiful image+distraction to draw you in.
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| M:
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Ja, classical. It works. Heysan!
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| N:
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Hey even the burkha shops in old Dhaka, selling what we call "ninja" burkhas, sometimes have pictures of Juhi Chowla.
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| M:
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Burkha? What is it?
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| N:
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Hijab.
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| M:
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Hijab? Sorry. I don't know Juhi Chowla neither. Basicaly I don't know what you are talking about.
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| N:
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The head to toe veil. It's the veil clothing worn by Muslim women. Juhi Chaula or Chowla is Miss India. DO NOT INCLUDE THIS portion in our transcript.
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| M:
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Why?
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| N:
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Because I think "head to toe veil" is a really poor way to explain the burkha. So anyway my point is, even in the most unexpected contexts there can be bursts of beauty. We will edit the transcript later, yes?
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| M:
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Surely edited.
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| N:
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Heh. Bastard, I don't believe you. See in the old days I used to enjoy in explaining in great detail all the Muslim artefacts. But these days I want to escape the role of "native translator". Which sometimes explains what these custom feel like to me.
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***
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| After note:
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My wife thinks it is so embarrassing that I didn't know Burkha was called Burkha and I should take this part off. Now that two of you say so, it seems to be a good reason to include the whole thing. Haihai!
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