Mein Beitrag war dieser hier:

Die Buchbranche wettert gegen den Online-Riesen Amazon. Lauscht man dem wütenden Buchhändler-Mob, ist Eigentümer Jeff Bezos das personifizierte Böse, das seine Angestellten ausbeutet, keine Steuern zahlt und den kleinen Buchhändler zu Staub zertrampelt. Nicht, dass das keine guten Gründe wären, den Konzern zu boykottieren, aber Robin-Hood-Attitüde mal beiseite, worum geht es hier eigentlich wirklich? In Wahrheit wären wir Buchhändler auch keine Amazon-Fans, wenn es sich dabei um einen Musterbetrieb handelte. Hier geht es nicht um moralische Überlegenheit, sondern um Geld. Amazon casht im großen Stil ab, während wir – die kleinen Buchhändler – einen weinerlichen Feldzug führen, der nicht zu gewinnen ist. Um Firmen wie Amazon einen fühlbaren Schaden zuzufügen, bräuchte es Boykotte ganz anderer Dimensionen. Doch diese zu erreichen erscheint unwahrscheinlich. Den meisten Leuten könnte es nämlich egaler nicht sein, wie viel der Packer verdient, der ihr Produkt in ein Kuvert steckt. Für Bequemlichkeit wirft der Mensch seine Prinzipien über den Haufen. Mit welchem Argument beschweren sich eigentlich Unternehmer, die ihre Geschäftsstrategie von vor 25 Jahren beibehalten haben, während die Welt sich mit jedem Augenblick ändert? Homepage – zu teuer. Facebook – brauchen wir nicht. Setzt sich eh nicht durch, dieses Internet.
Kaufen ist wie wählen. Durch unser Konsumverhalten bestimmen wir die Welt, in der wir leben, mit. Wie Wähler wollen auch Kunden überzeugt werden. Dafür genügt es im Jahr 2013 nicht mehr, sich auf seiner Laden-um-die-Ecke-Romantik auszuruhen und auf seine älteren Rechte zu pochen. Die Frage ist nicht, ob Großkonzerne das Böse sind, sondern, was wir aktiv tun, um uns besser zu vernetzen und um dem Kunden zu vermitteln, dass wir die bessere Alternative sind. Ein “Amazon? Nein, danke”-Schild in der Auslage wird dafür jedenfalls nicht ausreichen.

Juba the capital is a messy place, very loud due to traffic and power generators, dirty and secretly dominated by a crowd of lively goats. The streets are shit, especially during the rain season when everything is muddy and flooded as soon as it rains more than two hours. There is no functional canal system and the soil is very hard so the water just flows everywhere. There is no electricity network so you are dependent on private power generators. Sometimes you will have three to four hours electricity a day if you are lucky and that‘s it. You get used to it very quickly, though. What I couldn‘t get used to were the side-effects of my malaria prophylaxes Lariam. It feels like having very high fever. I had nightmares, felt weak and depressed and was even hallucinating a bit when it got very hot. But it was high season for malaria, so I took my pills and tried not to pass out.

The horror stories I had heard about South Sudan and the idea that I will probably be kidnapped right away from the airport and mass raped by violent ex-soldiers all proofed wrong. From the beginning the South Sudanese people were so super nice to me that my grumpy Viennese soul was having troubles to respond to it adequately. I even did what I was strongly advised not to do by the Foreign Ministry of Austria: I took a walk through the city all alone. It is true, you are drawing people‘s attention as a single white woman walking around alone in Juba, but everybody was very helpful and friendly with me. The most dangerous thing in Juba is probably the traffic. There are hardly any paved streets and everything else is turned into orange mud after a bit of rain. So you have to take a motorbike taxi to get around quickly. It is dangerous and scary and the whole street is covered with parts of broken motorbikes because there are so many accidents. You might end up sitting behind a 15-year-old kid who bought his driving licence for a couple of dollars and shouts things like „I know God is with us“ when it approaches the most terrible and slippery parts of the street. The problem with the traffic is not only that most people are not very good drivers. It’s also that they have cars driven on the left side AND cars driven on the right side. In general the go for the right side of the street and they overtake cars on both sides. They have roundabouts, but don’t know how to use them so they go through in both directions. I mostly closed my eyes and hoped I would survive. Also there are no street addresses in Juba. So you have to explain everything with landmarks. The motorbike taxi drivers mostly promise to know exactly where you want to go and then start searching for it. So you might end up two kilometers outside of Juba in the total darkness with nothing, but mud under the wheels of the bike and the kid saying “sorry, maybe I don’t know where it is” which happened to me quite frequently.

We visited a small city in the North of Juba called Terakeka. It is famous for its fisheries and the people there are very proud of it. The Commissioner was informed about our arrivel and and provided us with a boat in which we crossed the wonderful Nile to go to a fishing camp. A man there had collected a couple of orphans after the wars and they were now fishing with him. Naked and on the most remote place on Earth. But they seemed to be quite happy.

One day later I took a flight to the capital of Jonglei state, the biggest and most populated, but also most troubled part of the country. The plane had about twelve passenger seats and was vibrating like a flying Coca Cola can. The city is called „Bor“ which means something like „a lot of water“. A name well-deserved as I realized when we arrived. The whole place was flooded. I walked through the mud without shoes to the hotel where I was told that they only have a tent left for me. This turned out to be much better than a hotel room because 1. it wasn’t that hot in there 2. at nights when they turned off the generators and there wasn‘t a single light I could see millions and millions of stars right from my bed. I got pretty sick there so I sent the photographer to the next appointment alone. He should have been back within one day, but he got stuck in the mud and came back after three days. He said he spent a night in a cattle camp. In the meantime I was sick in my tent. I shared the bed with a cricket of the size of a little rabbit and some lizards and snakes were probably partying under my bed. The thing is because there is absolutely nothing you can do about that, you get used to it very quickly. Bored to death I borrowed a book from the receptionist. It was a religious book from Nigeria instructing the reader how to get rid of the devil if his ancestors have been into witchcraft or fetish. My favorite sentence: „If your parents have been into witchcraft and you were their favorite child, you might be also a witch without knowing it. In that case you have to pray very hard“ and of course burn all memories and photos of your parents.

The worst thing (at least during the rain season) is that you are wet all day long, either because it’s raining or because you are sweating or because of the insect spray you have to use on your clothes or because of the humid air. That is just terrible and made me feel almost sick.

The nation is still very new and there are a lot of things they haven’t figured out yet. Some phenomenons reminded me on Kosovo. For example that every small car wash or photo shop is called “The Republic of South Sudan car wash”  or „Juba Photo“ and so on. The country is still struggling to develop something like a national identity, though. It is divided within its own borders because of the ethnic clashes between different tribes. A situation that is only slowly improving. The infrastructure is a catastrophe and needs a lot of work and money. But it is a good country, with many great people. I felt homesick there all the time because everything was so different from the world I grew up in, but as soon as I was on my flight back to Europe I hoped that I will be able to visit South Sudan again in the near future.

And most important: THANK YOU, CAMILLE LEPAGE for helping my story so much. Check out Camille’s work. She is a documentary photographer from France, currently based in Juba.

This is an interview I recently had with the American director Daviel Shy. It was first published in German in The Gap. The English version is slightly different.

Copyright: Das Buffet ist Eröffnet 2012 (C) DavielShyFilms

Lesbian Zombies from Outerspace 

The American director Daviel Shy is in the process of shooting a lesbian horror movie in Vienna. In an interview on her current project „Das Buffet ist eröffnet“ she tells us what the lesbian horror movie is all about and why you have to call it like that. Scattered light, rustling plastic foil on the floor and a bucket full of pig blood steaming in the beam of the headlights. When Daviel Shy shoots a zombie movie the low-budget underworld glamour sprays sparks. Today the final scene of the 5 minute short film is to be shot. A naked woman is lying on the table – the last victim. She is decorated with a raw heart of a pig on her bare skin. The zombies – lesbians from different time periods – are sitting around the table and start cutting the slimy pig innards with their knives. „Now wake up!“ Daviel commands and the naked woman on the table slowly rises. But something goes wrong. The table overturns and the naked undead slips on the pig blood until she slowly glides onto the plastic foil. „Are you okay?“ – „Hast du dir wehgetan“ (Did you hurt yourself?) Everybody comes running, talking in different languages. But it‘s all good and the scene is already shot. Despite every spontaneity and the short time within the movie shooting was arranged everything seems very professional – last but not least because the director seems to know exactly what she is doing. A photo of the Vienna-based Brasilian photographer Roberta Lima inspired Daviel to the horror idea. Lima had taken a shot of herself in the role of some kind of sleepless zombie woman in a Victorian dress standing in a Viennese street. Now she is playing that character in Daviel‘s film.

Daviel Shy talked to us about the message of her film and about the constitution of collective identity in the lesbian arts scene.

Copyright: Das Buffet ist Eröffnet 2012 (C) DavielShyFilms

The undead in your movie are passing the zombie virus to each other through extreme sexual acts. Would it be possible for people to get the message wrong and associate it with the transmitting of disease?’

Daviel Shy: The zombie-like characters in Das Buffet ist Eröffnet kill only with their bare hands and mouths. They devour each other through sex, taking the common idiom of “eating pussy” literally and to the extreme. Because the victims come back to life, as women hungry cannibals themselves, it is possible that, as you suggested, one could make the association with the spread of a virus/disease.

Wouldn‘t that be the opposite of what you want to say?

Not every character “turns” through sexual contact. When the last character is introduced, it creates a rupture in the established pattern. She stands in the doorway, frightened but eager, and bites herself, signaling her desire to enter into the ritual of her own accord and “volunteering” to become “one of us”.

Is it important to call it a „lesbian“ horror film instead of just saying „horror film“? Does that label play a role for empowerment of lesbians? Doesn’t calling it a lesbian horror film create an inequality itself?

I completely understand the argument against narrow compartmentalization, especially when labels can often be thrust upon artists to in order to further ghettoize or deny entry, power etc. But it has always been very important for me to use the term lesbian. Too often people shy away from the word either in favor of no word at all, in which case the piece can be subsumed into a broader culture and lost to those seeking a specifically lesbian film – or in favor of a looser umbrella term such as queer.

Doesn’t  that give collective identity of lesbians a more essential role than being lesbian as one feature of a personal identity?

While it is completely up to each artist, I prefer to staunchly stand by the beauty and specificity of the term lesbian, whether sexuality is part of the work or not. I am proud of this film, which was made by mainly lesbians and all women cast and crew. And the lesbian label has been a part of the project from the very beginning.

Artists rarely use distancing effects in such an extended way as you do.It seems like the movie is trying to be very loud and irritating, like a slap into the face of the constructed social norm of being hetero. Is this your way of expressing the term „empowerment“ that you use so often?

I really like the idea that it has aspects of an installation. I used various techniques to produce the desired experience of the film; what you called, “a slap in the face.” I took inspiration from horror, camp, melodrama, spectacle and sexploitation films engaged both aesthetically but also for what they do. I wanted to make a film that does not to shy away from blood, death, and disease.
Exploiting existing fears is a part of the horror genre. While not my primary intention, to imply that lesbianism is a disease, spreading through pleasure from which no one is safe, is a manipulation of the fear invented by homophobes but re-purposed through camp. In a recent lecture, film theorist John Malarkey (of Kingston University, London) argues that the feeling of horror is produced in film when that which is usually in the background demands attention. In a political context, if those who are usually marginalized threaten to take the foreground, this can be terrifying to audience members who now occupy that space. In other words, horror is one way to say, “Be afraid. Be afraid of what is happening in this film because we (lesbians) refuse to be peripheral.”

The movie will be released next Halloween.

Copyright: Das Buffet ist Eröffnet 2012 (C) DavielShyFilms

Now that I think about it, it’s hard for me to believe that it has been only one year  since I first traveled to the Balkans. I remember how nervous I was because it was my first big story for a newspaper that you can actually buy in all the stores. I called one of my best friends in a state of slight panic because I felt like I have no idea what I am doing. But he knew. He was one of the first people to tell me that this is probably the right way for me. Back then this cheered me up but I didn’t realize at all how important it was for the following developments that he believed in me.

Also I was lucky to meet somebody in Serbia who gave me back my enthusiasm for writing and journalism. The fact that I reclaimed this passion at the Balkans might be the most important reason why I keep going back there all the time. Although it was a highly confusing and very exhausting summer for me I kind of found my way over there. I suddenly knew what I want to do with my life. And from that time on everything seemed to sort itself out without me contributing a thing. Of course this is not true. I worked the clock around the past year, but it didn’t feel like work. It was more like being back to school, but without teenage drama, without annoying teachers, without maths. Just finding out about things and learning how to think.

Now I’m back on my desk, on this very same spot where everything started for me twelve months ago. It appears pathetic to feel so much nostalgia for a situation that hasn’t passed yet and hopefully won’t be over too soon. The next big mission, the next level is waiting for me now and I’m nervous again. Oh, how naive of me to think I will relax after a few months in this job. But as one of my favorite writers once said: “Gasps of relief and satisfaction are the features of an amateur.”

I’m very happy to have some interesting company on this trip. Freelance photographer Matt Lutton will join me. Check out his Website! It’s worth it.

I should find out things in Belgium are far more complicated than most people in Europe imagine. What is reduced to a fight about money on the news is embedded into a conflict that has been existing as long as the Belgian state.

Read the whole story (in German) in 2012‘s July issue.