A constant, dependable presence. With the camera focused on the North Star for an extended period, the rotation of the Earth becomes visible. Nearby, in the municipality of Wiederstedt, the geologist, poet and philosopher Friedrich von Hardenberg (better known by his pen name Novalis) spent his childhood years between 1772 and 1784. A quote of his is engraved on a stone bench in the park surrounding the chateau where he was raised: “The human being does not speak alone – the universe also speaks – everything speaks – infinite languages.” 

Freely adapted from interviews with residents of Sandersleben (Saxony-Anhalt). Three-act play. The first two acts take place in the present day; the third is set in the future.

From Act 2 ‘The Inhabitants’, Scene 5, ‘Living Differently’. 
Characters: MR DUNST club member I, MR WINDORF amateur astronomer

“… the late-Gothic St Mary’s Church in Sandersleben … was consecrated in 1519, just two years after Martin Luther published his Ninety-five Theses. After extensive renovation, part of it is still home to Sandersleben’s Protestant community. The building spans the historical period encountered throughout this region, the various stages of which continue to resonate today. Parts of the church predate the Reformation and the Peasants’ War; its tower, for instance, was initially a city tower before its subsequent role as a watchtower. The contemporary folding glass barrier inside the church is a nod to the future. Since 2013, this feature has enabled the church to host secular events, as it separates the choir from the nave. The significance of a structure or place is derived from its function. If it ceases to serve a purpose or meet a need, it loses its societal relevance. This lack of societal meaning becomes evident in its dilapidation and, ultimately, in its decay, removal or demolition. Lesser-known structures that haven’t been captured in photographs or documented can thus vanish completely, leaving no archaeological footprint, especially when replaced by new constructions. They leave no vestiges behind, not even a trace, which is usually an indicator of the presence of nothingness …”¹

Gu Eryi’s Shanghainese opera film A Single Spark (1959) dramatises a violent confrontation between indentured labourers and their managers at the Japanese-owned Naigaiwata Company No. 7 Cotton Mill in 1925. The film’s protagonist is Yang Guiying, a peasant who moves to Shanghai to join her daughter only to find her at her last breath on the factory floor after being brutally beaten by her supervisor. The incident sparks protests among the workers at the factory, eventually resulting in one of them, Gu Zhenghong, being killed by a gunshot fired by a guard in the heat of the moment. This further escalates the unrest to a citywide scale, catalysing the May Thirtieth Movement.

The scenes of workers striking were filmed at Shenxin No. 9 Cotton Mill, also the location for another worker-themed film, United Until Tomorrow (1951). Those of Yang Guiying taking to the streets in support of anti-imperialism and patriotism were filmed at the Bund and the area surrounding Waibaidu Bridge. As for Naigaiwata Company No. 7 Cotton Mill where the events depicted in the film actually took place, the enterprise was merged with No. 5 and No. 8 Cotton Mills after the war and nationalised as Shanghai No. 2 Cotton Mill. Today, the site once occupied by the mill is a residential area where a statue of martyr Gu Zhenghong, first erected in 1959, stands before a memorial hall that was established in 2008.

A classic of Republican-era cinema, the 1926 silent film A String of Pearls follows the trials and tribulations of a middle-class Shanghai couple after a pearl necklace borrowed by the husband to please his materialistic wife is stolen. In order to pay for a replacement, the protagonist resorts to embezzling public funds and consequently ends up in prison. After working as a weaver during his sentence, he becomes a worker at Zhenhua Cotton Mill following his release. In an obvious homage to the Lumières’ seminal film, a scene in the film shows workers, including children, entering the factory to begin a day’s work.

Even though the precise location of the factory gate in the film cannot be determined, it happens that the first enterprise that attracted the investment of Rong Ruixin—a relative of cotton magnates Rong Zongjing and Rong Desheng—was called Zhenhua Cotton Mill. Established in 1905, Zhenhua Cotton Mill was not fully mechanised, which would correspond with the appearance of a hand-operated loom in the film. Today, a residential community sits on the original site of the cotton mill.

When discussing the sensitivities around viewing British propaganda photographs from the 1950s with Mau Mau veterans in Kenya, it became clear that it was not the graphic photographs of atrocities that would trigger the veterans emotionally, but a series of straightforward portraits of men who had pledged allegiance to the British colonial administration. These portraits were catalogued along with the men’s names and another photograph of each one of them signing a declaration of collaboration. I was advised by the representative of the veterans’ association that it would be too dangerous to share these photographs with the veterans.

Getty Images charges a fee for the use of a 1953 image depicting Mau Mau detainees building a wall. Working together with the Bristol Archives in the case of this collection, Getty claims to sell services such as “image search tools” and “research support”. These images are public domain and in fact available for free but as long as Getty does not charge the fee as a copyright claim, there is no legal obstacle to charging money for images to which they hold no copyright.

When discussing the sensitivities around viewing British propaganda photographs from the 1950s with Mau Mau veterans in Kenya, it became clear that it was not the graphic photographs of atrocities that would trigger the veterans emotionally, but a series of straightforward portraits of men who had pledged allegiance to the British colonial administration. These portraits were catalogued along with the men’s names and another photograph of each one of them signing a declaration of collaboration. I was advised by the representative of the veterans’ association that it would be too dangerous to share these photographs with the veterans.

‘Dust particles flew off the box, disturbed by my opening. Adding to the sense that this archival material was vibrating under the weight of its unknown importance. Amidst the boxes of ‘Top Secret’ British governments documents, I find a map labelled ‘Syria’ 3.6.41.’

Screenshot from film chapter (Un)Touching Ground. A decolonial audio visual translation of an archival map reveals the effects of the Allied military campaign into Lebanon and Syria in 1941.
Frame of Accountability, 01:00:00, Helene Kazan, 2024.

Through film, installation, writing and public engagement Frame of Accountability investigates ‘risk’ as a lived condition, produced through the co-evolution of capitalist systems and violent conflict. The project focuses on the effects across Lebanon and Syria, with a view to understanding the wider regional and global consequences. Using poetic and critical-legal methods, the work explores ways of dismantling violence perpetrated through colonial mechanisms of governance, towards wider frameworks of accountability and justice. The work is produced in multi-part, non-linear formation.

Fairly detailed map of the two major marble quarries on the island of Tinos, Greece. The spontaneous route-advice was prepared by a local marble worker, P.D., in the Karia region of the island on a locally extracted, green marble slab. The waved lines represent roads traversing uphill, while the straight lines represent roads following a contour line of the topography.

‘Tell your friend that the wine is for girls; it’s very sweet,’ the marble worker alerted my travel companion K.S. after offering us local sweet wine. The workshop smelled like boiled meat and bones.

Notes on map from left to right, top to bottom:

1. Towards Vathi 
2. Quarry 
3. incomprehensible 
4. Towards Vathi Bleu 
5. Isternia 
6. Pirgos

I recognized it in a flash, the late Jurassic-early Cretaceous herbivore looming dangerously over the road I was cycling on. I thought of Some Windy Trees.¹

A utility pole (425638, 07/99, 07/2002, COBRA), electrical wires, a hawthorn (Crataegus) and an old man’s beard (Clematis vitalba). A symbiosis.

A year ago, mid-August, just before sunrise, the mostly unlit office buildings line the road that leads to the underground parking. I turn off the ignition. I’m in F36. The walls are painted pink. Looking for the exit, I take the escalator and get stuck in an empty shopping mall. The music is playing but all the shops are closed off with steel shutters. So are the exits. I’m out of place. In keeping early customers out, the mall is keeping haphazard visitors in. I’m back in the parking lot. The elevator is broken. I take the stairs and walk by a homeless man, sleeping. There’s shit on the floor. I open the door that leads out of the stairwell. It slams shut behind me. There’s no doorknob. I find myself on a dark floor between mall and parking lot. People are sleeping; some are awake. Heads turn toward me. I start walking slightly uphill towards where I think I might find an exit, or an entrance. The scale of the architecture has shifted from car (F36) and customer (the closed mall) to truck. I find myself amidst the supply-chain. It takes five minutes, maybe fifteen, maybe more to get out and see the office buildings towering over me in the first light of day.

A cigar box, standing at the back of a shelf next to the heating installation, with in it silex-like stones with what seem to be traces of prehistoric usage. 

In the garage, there were papers (the archive of O. Clemminck) and objects (stones, tiles) left to us by a man who had worked at the city archive. He was an acclaimed expert on our village’s history.¹

In 2020, the print versions of the Flemish telephone books ‘Gouden Gids’ and ‘Witte Gids’ (The Golden Guide and The White Guide), were published for the last time. From that year onwards, the directory could only be accessed and consulted online. The effect of the production of print telephone directories on the environment is considered to be enormous. As yearly updated, ubiquitous books, they were publications that soon turned superfluous. They led to piles of waste.

From the beginning of the 21st century on, both the print version and the online version had been available. This was a period of medium transition. During the last two decades, the print directory increasingly referred to the websites of the companies listed. To search for e.g. someone to inspect the heating installation, it was possible to find such a company’s website via the print directory, and consult the inspector’s services and price online, bypassing search engines such as Google and its complex algorithms. The telephone directory had a thematic and alphabetical order, combined with the possibility to buy additional advertising space. 

The scientific exactitude sought for in the Iconographie de la Salpêtrière and the Nouvelle Iconographie de la Salpêtrière, the (in)famous scientific publications stemming from Paris’ psychiatric hospital La Salpêtrière (1876-1918), lead to an abundance of photographic images in their pages. The photographs’ ideal: ‘Trace incontestable, incontestablement fidèle, durable, transmissible’.¹ The ambition of exactitude results in cold, and often cruel depictions of patients. In the digitized version of the Sorbonne library’s copies, some photographs have left an imprint on the opposite page. The knee of Charles, ‘le géant’, adds an unwanted layer upon its measures on the opposite page, while the photograph of the knee itself loses ink.²