(2020)
20:20
film-essay
by:
Sami Hammana
edited by: Ioana Tomici
sound by: Lendl Barcelos
voice by: Deca Mukhtar-Tawheed
typeface by: Simone Browne
colour by: Seecum Cheung

trailer
 


The recurring aim: making sense of that which can’t be sensed.
Coming across the following image: workers effectively walking
transoceanic distances in the act of manually coiling
undersea-cables inside of steel ship-hulls. In relation to the
cartographic images of undersea cables, tacitly laying on the
ocean’s floor following the similar oceanic navigational routes as
16th and 17th century colonial wooden ships, the recurring aim is
recapitulated. These are a few examples of images that are engaged
with in the film essay ~~~~, with the aim to aesthetically
elucidate the complicity of contemporary maritime technology with
colonial violence.


Consisting out of four acts,(~)engaging with that which is above
the water surface, (~~) establishing the limits of sensing
large-scale systems, or what is dubbed ‘the phenomenal threshold
of perception’, and (~~~), ‘the interscalar ship’, or attempting
to aesthetically annotate the importance of being aware and able
to travel between multiple and differing scales. Concluding with
(~~~~), which aims to read and reenact the hidden movements of the
human-labour involved.


Through this process, ~~~~ obsessively observes the image-debris
found in the aphotic corners of maritime spaces. Do lightless
oceanic zones conceal colonial complicity? Written on the curved
wall of the lightless cable-laying vessel’s hull: “Nabil Sharif”,
“Mohammed Qasim”, “iron like lion in zion”…

interview link

Written in collaboration with Jack Clarke for How To Sleep Faster issue 8, Autonomy & Automation

excerpt:

“What must be recognised from this is that we are in fact, above all else, in a state of urgency when it comes to these issues of autonomy and automation, sovereignty and technology. If those of us who have grown fond of (or, more seriously, who are now dependent on) the internet want to see a future that is not dictated by the repressive and contradictory desires of the NRx we need to start bootstrapping alternatives quickly.”

Lecture + Workshop at the HFG Karlsruhe

Prepositional Shifts: Design Methods in the Age of Finance and the Anthropocene
(lecture, 1st of november)
Two pervasive and seemingly unrelated events that have gained global attention in the recent decade have had, and will continue to have, large-scale implications on socio-economic and planetary conditions. Both of these events, financial violence and climate change, have become popular considerations in the field of contemporary design, with design projects that are about those events as commonplace sights in recent design exhibitions and biennales. This lecture explores in how far a thematic consideration can be simply ‘poured’ into the funnel of the design machine, and rhetorically asks if perhaps another task is more urgent. Proposing that these global events are not only thematic consideration, but perhaps more importantly, methodological necessities for design practices. Financialization and the fast-pace destruction of the Earth have to be seen as reasons to refashion how design operates.

a/b/c…
(workshop, 2nd and 3rd of november)
Departing from Dunne and Raby’s A/B manifesto, which are two juxtaposed sections of listed qualities that are assigned to ‘affirmative design’ and ‘critical design’. This workshop, afforded by the theorization of prepositional shifting, sets forth to problematize the current listed qualities in this work and provokes to collaboratively construct a ‘phylum’ or genealogy that extends into a multiplicities of design methods. Manifesto’s that function as a resource in negotiating the status and functional position of design interventions. The workshop thus invites the students to discuss and design methods of design, by taking the A/B structure of Dunne and Raby as a departure-template for thinking and assigning qualities for design methods. This working-group sets forth to account for the influence that contemporary conditions have on how we design.

(ongoing research project)

Geofinance: Financialities of the Anthropocene analyses a cause and effect relationship between financial systems and Earth-systems. The ‘geofinancial’ relation is elaborated on in the video essay Political Economy of Geofinance, which encompasses an analysis of a systemic conversion of environmental catastrophes and the use of financial products. This analysis is followed by a proposition: If derivative finance influences and instigates environmental catastrophes, then environmental emancipation needs to occur along similar speculative financial lines. Implied Volatile Earth is a financial mathematical model which brings together volatility mathematics and the spatial reconfiguration of territories through a model of the Earth covered with volatility surfaces. These graphs allow for price speculations on the future conditions of the territories that they cover, a zoomed-in section of the model underneath the whole view of the Earth together with the financial data next to it, propose the desired price to attain environmental emancipatory conditions of these territories.

MA dissertation

video 00’01’00” +
Led message board

Geofinance: Financialities of the Anthropocene analyses a cause and effect relationship between financial systems and Earth-systems. The ‘geofinancial’ relation is elaborated on in the video essay Political Economy of Geofinance, which encompasses an analysis of a systemic conversion of environmental catastrophes and the use of financial products. This analysis is followed by a proposition: If derivative finance influences and instigates environmental catastrophes, then environmental emancipation needs to occur along similar speculative financial lines. Implied Volatile Earth is a financial mathematical model which brings together volatility mathematics and the spatial reconfiguration of territories through a model of the Earth covered with volatility surfaces. These graphs allow for price speculations on the future conditions of the territories that they cover, a zoomed-in section of the model underneath the whole view of the Earth together with the financial data next to it, propose the desired price to attain environmental emancipatory conditions of these territories.

Softcover Book
(175 x 108 x 10 mm)
146p

The Geofinancial Lexicon extends the research project of relating finanical mechanisms to climate degradation by zooming in on the language that is used within financial trading. Taking the Financial Times’ (FT) online lexicon as a basis, the Geofinancial Lexicon archives and expands on the definitions of terms that hint at a relationship between finance and the climate.

Video
00’01’00”
Commissioned by Stroom & The One Minutes
For ‘Nøtel Cinema’, curated by Lawrence Lek and Lua Vollaard.

Script excerpt:

“The Volatility Surface is a graph that gives insight into the future characteristics of the price of a given commodity. It is used as a resource to influence a given territory by drafting trading strategies that speculate on its future financial status. The Implied Volatile Earth Agency (IVEA) develops and offers these models to corporations that aim to utilize the direct relationship that future prices have to future territories. A financial model of the Earth with correlating, coterminous mathematical models allows for a functional speculation on the environmental conditions to come.