Ali Lochhead

"In this new paradigm of peace, there are many contributors," Phil Vernon explains. The organisation he heads up has nearly 30 years experience in the peacebuilding sector, but it's still only achieving about 5% of what could be done, he estimates, perhaps modestly. "Most of the work has to be done by people who don't see themselves as peace builders," he says, "Such as the artists here...."



We're chatting at the opening of #ART4PEACE, part of a month-long festival of art, comedy, music...put on by International Alert. The exhibition, "Peace from the street up!" invites urban and street artists to share their perspectives on peace and conflict from their cities, around the world.

"So, do you see yourself as a peace builder?" I ask Yola, who's exhibiting at the show.

"No, I don't, but I'd like to," she replies. "I don't know if it's really possible, if it's strong enough to touch people, to reach people, but you use the material in your hands. The stuff I do on the streets, it's usually in development areas...one time I was in Praga in Warsaw, when it was a derelict, criminal part of the city and it was dark... this guy came up and he had no teeth and there I was with these expensive cameras, I thought, 'F*** we're in trouble now!'...I showed him my work and he said 'Wow'. He made the sign of the cross and said, 'It's really beautiful'... So the art established a totally different communication and that gives me hope it is possible to speak to others with images.

I'm excited to be part of this project," she says, "I hope it will be part of a bigger collaboration... I like what they do...I'd like to go to the countries where they work and work with the people there... go to the local community...make a piece, take photos and put it on the wall in the local space so they are part of the piece and peace is part of their lives."

So the piece is part of the peace.



The other artists are equally committed and hopeful. "Art can play a huge role in building peace," says Goldie (Clifford Joseph Price). "It can relay and portray a message on the streets. The world is an open blank canvas."

"And we can look at peacebuilding as a tapestry... just as this exhibition is made up of the pictures in the room," Phil adds. "There are lots of people and organisations involved, whether they're the artists here, the local council in Tunis, local businesses, it's about public collaboration..."



While conflict and peace have preoccupied mankind for centuries Phil explains "Peacebuilding is a relatively new sector, defined by Boutros Boutros-Ghali in the 1990s. International Alert was founded nearly 30 years ago by the Human Rights activist, Martin Ennals. As Secretary General of Amnesty International, he saw conflicts which weren't being addressed and he formed an organisation where the focus was on conflict resolution/peacebuilding. Their first activity was during the Ugandan civil war...it was just a small organisation using his Martin's contacts...which asked the question 'how can we live peacefully?' Now International Alert operates in over 25 countries and territories worldwide, including the ex-Soviet Union, South East Asia, Africa, the Middle East...so we feel we've got a lot to offer in terms of training, guidance and support."

"So how does your organisation work?" I ask.

"We work with local people who are trying to make a difference or who could make a difference... so for instance an NGO set up in Congo to help people, which can benefit from our global knowledge...we can bring in funding etc. It could be a local council, where we hold a peacebuilding lens in front of their eyes. Then we work with institutions who are trying to make a difference, for example, the UN... We work with mining companies and oil companies... for instance oil companies in Nigeria have contributed to conflict, sometimes without realising... Sometimes they realise and want help - then we work on a long-term relationship basis, building conflict sensitivity, peace sensitivity...so across their whole programme they can support peace. We build dialogue...so, for example, we work with others to improve their ability to reach across conflict divides...to get dialogue going across borders to build a bridge with people on both sides. Trade goes across these de facto borders so how can they build peace and build it into an economic model?

"Can you quantify success?" I ask.

"Yes, but it's hard. Most work is projectised, we submit a proposal to the EU etc. and mostly those are narrow...but it does provide a focus...For example in Congo we set out to improve local conflict resolution methods in communities...build the process of peace from the ground up. Out of 1000 conflicts, 60% were resolved. They were quite small conflicts - land, family, ethnic divides between communities. People start to think 'we can resolve this', it builds an ethos of peace...they start to see the methodology, so it can be replicated in other communities our agency can't reach. In that way we build positive peace...negative peace being where there is no fighting and positive peace being where there is less fighting or no fighting plus a culture, an attitude, a belief that when conflicts arise we do have the ability to resolve them."

He goes on to explain this is particularly prevalent in cities... "This year more than 50% of the world's population is living in an urban environment for the first time. Aristotle saw the city as a great enterprise, an endeavour but the rapid growth of development in cities brings alienation, poor government, gangs, mafia, all sorts of vices, especially during the transition period where people who haven't lived in cities are coming in. You don't need a lot of systems in a rural area...but in cities, you need positive peace systems, in London they've been built up over many centuries of political processes but that's not always the case in many cities we work in, so we take a very long-term approach...Take Lebanon...policies were founded on sectarianism, which sect gets which jobs in government, so it's an uneasy peace. It has grown into a more positive peace. We say let's discuss this from a wider perspective, not just Hezbollah/Jew. We work with all political parties... dialogue how to bring about peace...we work with the youth wings of the parties, as they're often more open and we start with really simple questions so dialogue is easy. For years we wouldn't discuss Palestinians in Lebanon but now that's part of the dialogue, as is the Syrian refugee crisis in Lebanon... They take the initiative and start to talk about issues that are difficult.



Look at the challenge of violence in cities," Phil continues, "Young people feeling frustrated, less empowered...the largest number of foreign fighters in ISIS are from Tunisia yet Tunisia has had 2 elections post-Arab Spring...ISIS is doing it's best to undermine that progress, as the bombing and shooting of tourists have shown...alienated young people join ISIS...it's an urgent problem. What if enough people from today's generation undermine the peace programme? It's important to ensure they have the opportunities they need...economic development, jobs, which are not sectarian...we're working with businesses on where to invest.... what's the peacebuilding solution? Economic development can be a force for peace whereas bad economic development can be terrible for peace as in oil in Nigeria, so the question is, as I am building my bottom line do I engage better relationships? Am I recruiting people who could be dissatisfied? It's not easy - it's a whole framework."

"Do you mean a kind of corporate peace?" I ask.

"Well, yes," Phil replies, "In as much as the baseline for companies when building their business and the way they evaluate their success is not just about profit and value to the shareholder, there's an intent to contribute to conflict resolution, to peace and stability, it's a whole new model."

I realise it's literally a paradigm shift. And I realise I can be part of this new reality, simply by building similar values into my life, even just in small, everyday ways. We can all contribute if we want to.

"Socially, personally...just be cooler. Be cool, don't treat yourself so seriously....that's the message I try to put int my art." Yola smiles.



Yola and Phil Vernon, the Director of Programmes at International Alert, were in conversation with Ali Lochhead.



Links:
Talking Peace Fesival
International Alert
Yola



The Talking Peace Festival is on until 3rd October 2015.

More pictures from the opening of the #ART4PEACE Exhibition can be viewed/downloaded here:
#ART4PEACE

This weekend Jac and I drove all the way across Germany, from Paris, and parked up on the banks of the Danube in Austria to cover ARS Electronica Fesitval , the festival for Art, Technology and Society in Linz. Over a thousand artists, scientists, techies, hackers, activists and entrepreneurs are in town to exhibit and perform around this year's theme of Artificial Intelligence. The festival examines our relationship with robots, our hopes and fears around AI and what it will mean for us - but it also plays on AI as the Andere Ich, the Other I - and probes what it means to be human, our strengths and our weaknesses. As we built AI it inherits our flaws too but may also be a key in transcending aspects of our nature.

Artificial Intelligence shares our prejudices, argues Dr. Joanna J. Bryson , as it was fashioned from data which has our inherent human biases built in. Dr. Bryson has just written a paper about Implicit Associations which reveals our biases based on gender and race, for instance. We might not think we're sexist but when asked to associate men, women, maths and reading, for example, tests show thousands of years of cultural conditioning are deeply ingrained. This skews the data analysis AI uses because through repeated association with other words the prejudices become embedded. Learning is not magic, Joanna argues, it’s just humans are good at sharing the knowledge they’ve acquired (culture by another name) and AI is built on the same knowledge base. However, humans don’t have to act upon their prejudices, someone may hold deep racist associations but they don’t necessarily act in a racist way, and Joanne argues we must build AI in such a way that it doesn’t stretch to Explicit Association by acting upon theses stereotypes either.

In the longer term, Dr. Bryson believes this deeper understanding of human behaviour, this new level of self-reflection and the ability to accurately predict our own behaviour will be as big a shift as the Copernican shift or the Darwinian shift and may also be rejected in the same way. Joanna believes this heightened understanding could help us find ways to reduce conflict and live sustainably. However, she says, "Knowing fully well what an individual person is likely to do in a particular situation is obviously a very, very great power." She says bad applications of this power include our being bullied and manipulated by big data companies and also politicians, where customers can be deliberately addicted to products or services and elections can be skewed.

If AI does fail us there’s little comfort in the current EU legislation argues Dr. Sandra Wachter, who points out this is not some faraway future world - algorithms and robotics are already used in the criminal justice system, (judges use algorithms to help decide if a person should go to jail) predictive policing (predicts areas where criminal behaviour is likely) our health system (robots are used in surgical procedures) and soon we will have autonomous cars driving us around. However Sandra thinks much of the information around AI application is opaque, for instance, she believes under the EU legislation if we are refused a job, although we have the right to ask for an explanation this is regarding the system, i.e. the data gathered about you in the decision making process and how that was used - but not the rationale of individual decisions, even though it’s been widely reported this is the case. Furthermore, the right only exists in cases where the process was entirely automated and that’s generally not the case, or a case can be manufactured so a human is involved at some point. If your self-driving car crashes, if you get sent to prison erroneously or if a robotic surgical procedure is performed incorrectly upon your body, wouldn’t you want to know precisely why?

And Dr. Wachter asks, is automation in the criminal justice system ethical? Currently, a judge may struggle with a decision to jail someone, is it easier to put them behind bars if it can be argued an algorithm said so and the human struggle is removed? While AI isn’t prejudiced it’s learning from biased data as we are human with human prejudices Dr. Wachter's stance is it’s important to keep humans in the loop as our use of AI unfolds and that we maintain transparency.

For Buddhist Monk Zenbo Hidaka, an expert on AI, artificial intelligence will surpass the subjectivity of human beings and like Dr Joanna Bryson he believes when we contemplate AI our first contemplation is of the culture which gave birth to it. "Technology inherently tends towards universality. If it were really universal, it will be free from the indigenousness of culture," he explains. While for Joanna understanding AI is deepening the understanding of human nature and behaviour, for Zenbo Hidaka the deeper understanding of ourselves may lead us to a transcendent existence, "To know myself as I am".

From a spiritual perspective, there are many levels of consciousness and the dialogue around natural and artificial intelligence and what it means for us to be human occurs on several levels simultaneously. Zenbo Hidaka says, "It may be difficult to definitely define singularity, but I believe it is time to deepen self-awareness by facing transcendental existence. The fact that AI goes beyond human ability may be a threat in the sense that it exceeds our control, but it may also be rediscovery of the sanctity once played by religion."

"What is intelligence?" He asks, for he believes it is not deeply understood. The monk explains there are two kinds of intelligence in Buddhism and thought and cognition are not the same. Thought is associated with wisdom and philosophy and is passive, this type of intelligence is received. Cognition is associated with knowledge and the sciences and is an active inquiry. So, he asks, can AI help us integrate both types of intelligence? Zenbo Hidaka believes it can be so.

In my heart I love to know strangers, communicate with strangers, or to have some kind of relationship with strangers. I think this project is based on the innermost expectation of connection with strangers. But in Beijing's undergrounds, people are crowded together exaggeratedly, shoulder by shoulder, face to face. A girl's long hair can touch my face when she swings her head, I can smell the fragrance of the shampoo she used.

A video posted by Jiwei Han (@jiweihan) on Nov 14, 2016 at 5:00pm PST

Perhaps the distance between my face and a stranger's face is no more than 20cm, in these conditions people won't look at you any more or even give you a quick glance. So, between myself and strangers, we have physical contact, but in our hearts, we are living on different planets.

A video posted by Jiwei Han (@jiweihan) on Nov 8, 2016 at 5:20pm PST

And 'Strangers' is a comment about this... but for this project I didn't want to continue taking still photos on the metro because too many good photographers have done many great works. In Beijing, Chinese photographers have been taking photos in Beijing's undergrounds for more than ten years, so I thought I needed to change the way to show this topic and I started shooting short videos with my iPhone.

A video posted by Jiwei Han (@jiweihan) on Sep 22, 2016 at 11:29pm PDT

On the street I use small camera with a flash, a more like Bruce Gilden's way, I admire him....but I don't have his life experiences, so sometimes when I do this project, I have strong desire to say sorry to people...sorry for any offence, aggression, any hurt to innocent people who just walk on streets.



I am reminded of Susan Sontag's words in her book 'On Photography' -- "To photograph people is to violate them.". I think to myself, 'she's right'. It doesn't matter if people give you permission or not, if you take photos of them, you will take something away from them. Perhaps faces, bodies, the environment around people or something. Many times I have no self-confidence because I'm always worrying... do I know these people very well? Do my pictures show who he/she is? Do my pictures can show what I am thinking about him/her?



I am a street photographer and l spend lots of time on the street taking photos. Usually, I ask people's permission before taking photos if I see a person, or a group, who interest me. I think, a few years ago, people's attitudes were very friendly and they generally accepted my request. But now, 90% of people will reject my requests on the street without any reasons, they just say "No" with actions of turning their head away or using their hand to cover their face.



So I thought perhaps I can focus only on this moment for a photographic project. Perhaps I can capture a strange moment or a strange thing - where, as a photographer, there's something I want to have from people who don't want to give it and who are trying to protect it. And so the project "No" was born.





Although ironically, my career started with a "yes" when I asked a beautiful woman to go out with me and she accepted...it was 2004.... I had just graduated from my university, and at that time, I met my girlfriend ( now, she is my wife). In order to record our first date I borrowed a DC from my friend and took the 1st picture in my life. Before, I had never thought about photography, never even touched a camera. And I found that photography's an interesting thing, it could allow me to see something that normally I ignored. Although at the beginning of my studies, like many beginners, I took photos of followers, trees, landscapes, people and so on. But as my understanding about photography became more in-depth, I realized what I really care about, in my heart, via my camera, it's about people who surround me, about our life. It's like, everyone has their own secrets and the viewfinder could help me to find out people's secrets, could help me to understand our life, not only in personal view, but also under the knowledge of society, history, culture.....



I think it's unlike writing, where you can describe a person from your imagine without having known them... but to photograph people, you need to know him/her through conversation or in other ways, and need to stay with him/her for a long time in order to know who he/she is, to let both understand each other. I think this is a way to reveal the secret... I think you street photography gives me that.... I think so... but perphaps more on the level of social life, the secrets of the society and less on the personal... where the individual people form part of the tapestry of the bigger picture.



Jiwei Han was in conversation with Ali Lochhead.

"I think it's madness!" Rosario exclaims when I ask her about the current architectural policy in London. "But that's part of our work, Roberto and I, it's not just about creating things, it's about understanding the world around us, things that don't make sense to us, it's philosophical."



The duo, who've been lovers and artistic soulmates for over 25 years are currently exhibiting at the ICA studio in London. El Ultimo Grito are the 33rd show in the fig-2 project, which hosts fifty exhibitions in fifty weeks. Their work's inspired by the young, radical thinkers who formed the avant-garde architectural movement in Florence in the late sixties. "I was only born in 1966 but they influenced me," Rosario reflects. "I remember the MoMA exhibition 'Italy: The New Domestic Landscape' it was in 1972 but I studied it at University, it was a pivotal moment in design. These guys saw aesthetics and practice as one, everything they were doing was a physical thesis". She continues, "We liked their work and many of them became friends. At the forefront of the movement, Superstudio had a vision for a futuristic world covered in a super grip and the idea was everyone would receive the same services, like electricity, wherever they were on the planet. Because it was the seventies it was all happy," Rosario explains. "We wouldn't work, the service would provide! Superstudio produced all these collages at the time, they had a graphic quality, these grid images. Then we had a technical glitch on our map one day and this is how it looks:



this isn't fabricated, this is the way the map's produced and it's just like Superstudio's vision. The Internet's like the super grid covering the planet and we all have access to the same service - information - wherever we are, provided our technological and political systems allow it - but, I mean in theory. It's just like the vision yet the guys could never have imagined the internet 50 years ago. And now the maps are becoming historical documents, documenting how quickly cities are changing. We look at a map and we think it's real time but sometimes we look up and there's a building that's not there. In London the urban landscape is changing so quickly, there's a real rushed quality about it, a madness, and a lack of a sense of planning. They're pulling down estates, as social projects which didn't work and replacing them with new builds, which aren't better, they just look more gentrified. Everything's open plan but then you have a smaller house because when you have open plan living you don't need a kitchen - and you're part of this rush. So we wanted to make something that speaks about how the buildings are built. It's difficult to create when you're using tools which tell you how to work, so with a hammer for instance you know you have to hammer with it. We wanted a radically different method, so we changed the system and created a system that changed the preconceived way in which you make things. We started using cardboard, packing materials, tape, so it's a physical process, you're creating with your whole body. Shapes are more organic, there's freedom to explore.



We challenged the methodology of creating objects, we designed a sticker, which is hand crafted but then there's an industrial aspect in how it's manufactured and applied, as we can work with thousands of them. The sticker's like a fractal - it's one unit but when you multiply it creates a different entity.



And it's just like the way buildings are being put up today, we start with a structure and when we apply the stickers it's like cladding - the stickers have the same character, you start cladding and you very quickly have an impression of the building. When you are physically creating in this way you get a deeper level of understanding; it's different to developing ideas on a purely intellectual level, it gives you another dimension to understanding the world around you, you materialise the things you see - it's not just intellectual. It's selfish of Roberto and I in a way as we're exploring things we don't understand but then lots of people share the same anxieties as us and you can push to a certain place, you can open up other possibilities."



"Do you want to change the way we're designing and constructing our buildings then?" I ask.
"Well, we're not architects or planners but yes, inspire architectural debate."

Inverting the traditional model Rosario Hurtado and Roberto Feo opened the exhibition on Monday with a mostly empty space at the ICA Studio in London and are constucting their landscape throughout the week, to culminate in the close on Sunday.

Creating and living together produces an intensity. "There's nowhere to hide," Rosario laughs, "You can't say I'm off to work. When it's great it's really great. And when there's a fight there's a big mess everywhere!"
"But obviously it works for you," I observe.
Rosario smiles, "I don't know any other way".



fig-2 33/50 El Ultimo Grito is free to see at the ICA Studio, The Mall, London until Sunday 23rd August.

Rosario Hurtado was in conversation with Ali Lochhead.♥

Links:
El Ultimo Grito
fig-2
Italy: The New Domestic Landscape
Superstudio Background
Superstudio Documentary