7 Crossing the threshold: posthuman #2
A sentence from Edwards leapt out at me and I wanted to see if I could explore an inarticulate idea I’ve long held but could never find a way to fully express. In my way, this is an attempt at some responsible experimentation. Edwards was discussing the entanglement of the human and the non-human “as without the non-human, humans would neither exist nor be able to act as part of the world.” (Edwards, 2010, p7) It brought into focus an idea I’d often had but always stumbled over articulating.
When I first moved to the Arabian Gulf, I was astounded at how such large cities could exist in what appeared to be a hostile environment of heat, dust, salt and scouring winds. Many others have commented on the sci-fi film appearance of Gulf cities and the sight of Riyadh rising out of its desert plateau never failed to make me catch my breath; how did it survive there?
One minute it's desert, then suddenly it becomes a city
Water is pumped across the desert, for about 450 kms, from the desalination plants on the Gulf coast. The air is chilled and it is possible to live life without ever leaving a thermostatically controlled environment for more than a few minutes; just long enough to move from your car to the lift or from the supermarket to your car. Cars rule. Air conditioning rules. Water wealth, as commented on by Jonathan Raban in “Arabia Through the Looking Glass”, rules.
During the 2nd Gulf War, we were warned to store water as one hit to The Pipe (you never needed to ask which pipe was being spoken about), and the city would dry up and out and away. Embassies filled their pools with fresh water, I filled my cupboards with drums of the stuff. It brought home the nature of life in these environments and how far we, as humans, have moved into the apparently hostile and made it our home. The older generations would talk nostalgically of life Before Air Conditioning yet few wanted to return to wind towers and mud walls.
Living in a desert city is an ontological experience. So many aspects of life are conceptual e.g. chilled air, potable sea water but the meaning is difficult to siphon off from the matter. To understand the importance of air conditioning, it cannot be simply represented as chilled air. Air conditioning makes life possible. Similarly with desalinated water; you cannot simply say it is water with the salt removed. Am I making sense?
(I can’t find any images to represent what air conditioning and ample water supply mean.)
Here in the UAE, there is an abandoned village called Al Jazeerah Al Hamra. To walk around the village is to sense something of Edwards’ take on “gathering things together and experimenting.” To see an abandoned village, with shutters at the windows and paint on cracking mud walls, is to invite all manner of explanation. I suppose in a representational way, explanations would be sought as to the origin of the story. But “origins are myths” and, as Edwards makes clear, “place contraints on experimentation’. (Ewards, 2010, p8.)
My photos from the village uploaded to flickr (beware: I’m not a photographer!)
The village is a popular subject for newspaper stories and everyone they interview who used to live there gives a slightly different version of the reason why they left. “I claim little original or seek the origins to that which I write. I gather words.” To that I’d add images. For images evoke words plus emotions and I suspect that an approach to learning that involves so much entanglement cannot escape the powerful impetus of emotion. To learn why the people of Al Jazeerah Al Hamra left would require a co-existence of matter and meaning; air-conditioning, water supply and strong walls not represented by chilled air, pipes and concrete. “The knowing human subject is decentred by a concern for ways of enacting within the material world.” (Ewards, 2010, p9). The Gulf villages and cities decentre the human subject. The buildings, their functions, their facilities interact or fail to interact with their environment in ways which the human subject still does not fully comprehend. The builders of Burj Khalifa in Dubai fully admitted the risks they were taking and how their creation required the development of new technology as the building took shape and grew. But remove the non-human and what would still function in a landscape where a sandstorm can strip a car of paint down to the bare metal in a matter of hours?
Sand storm moving in from the desert and moving through Riyadh