Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything - Countryside (Social Distance Learning part iii)

Episode Date: April 17, 2020

Urbanites are fleeing cities for beach communities and small country towns! Tensions are spreading faster than the Coronavirus. Your host turns to the last exhibition he saw in New York (Countryside the Future! from Rem Koolhaas) and the first dystopian film he watched in confinement (Michael Haneke’s Time of the Wolf) for answers. Plus a beach to beach chat with Helen and Martin from the Allusionist!

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Episodes every other week at neverpo.st and wherever you find pods. This installment is called Countryside. Hello! Hey! You guys hear me? Yeah! Hey Benjamin! Helen and Martin, this is great. So tell me, what beach are you guys standing on? We're on Brighton Beach on the south coast of England. It's a really big pebbly beach. Yeah, so I think I know this one. This is the one from all the movies of the 60s and 70s where all the youth go down to party and fight.

Is that the beach you're on? Right. That's happening right now. A lot of youth fights. That's why we're here. A lot of quadrophenia kind of action. Amazing. We're beach to beach guys. Tell me how you guys ended up there. We were in the States and we decided to come back to Britain while the planes were still going. Because we don't have a

place it was like okay let's choose from any place. First it's a town where we don't know loads of people so it's quite easy to socially isolate. There's not so much temptation to hang out with people. It's got the world's first aquarium. Does it? I think it's shut. It had the world's first aquarium. And why not it with your family in London? We didn't want to infect anyone. We're probably not gonna see our family for ages you know because they're all pretty old and it's not a good time to be hanging out with them. I'll just go and cough at my parents until they die. You guys are so lucky that you did so much traveling this last two years. I feel... Oh my god, I know. I know. I think about that all the time and we got to see so many people before

the end. Well, the beach I'm standing on here on Ile de Ré is closed. All of the beaches on this island are closed. You know, you guys might know this about me. I'm not really an outdoors person. You know, nature is not really my thing. I can't even picture you outdoors. You carry like a dollhouse on your head so you've got the sense of indoors with you wherever you go. But wow, this deserted post-apocalyptic scene I'm looking at here where you know there's you've

got these giant no all right signs you know marking every every entrance to the beach it's beautiful that's your kind of vacation paradise do you feel like Charlton Heston yeah no it's it's really something I think I could live in a place like this you should come to Britain like Britain Britain's like that all year round we've got yeah we've got tons of like old seaside towns that have sort of dried up and gone crap because people started going holiday on holiday Britain's like that all year round. Yeah, we've got tons of old seaside towns that have sort of dried up and gone crap because people started going on holiday abroad. I wonder if they'll get an economic boost

because all of the people like us are going to the seaside to wait out the virus. Maybe that will revivify all of these depressed communities. I think we could create this seaside disaster capitalism. It's a new one. I don't know, I think Banksy already did it. Guys, there's a dog coming towards me. And I haven't...

I'm not up on my research yet. Is this dog... Am I allowed to touch it? No, you can touch the dog. You just have to stay within, you know, two metres away from the person. Is the dog wearing a mask? Does it have a jaunty bandana? The dog is not wearing a mask and the dog is alone.

Oh, it's just the dog? The dog... Yeah, the dog. I dog is alone. Oh, it's just the dog? The dog, yeah. I've been more worried about rabies than COVID. There's not been live cases of rabies in Europe since 1900. Yeah, better safe than sorry though, Helen. If rabies goes airborne. The dog is not interested in me. The dog went right past.

So one of the stories here is that the people who live here year-round have kind of been horrified at the number of Parisians who showed up. In fact, they closed the bridge down. They closed the bridge only to residents for a month. A little too late. I think 6,000 people showed up before they did that. Hold on one second. There comes that dog again. I think the dog must belong to those people. Bonjour. I'm in the clear. But Mathilde is worried I present too

too much as a foreigner so... When I just walked by those people I was actually like okay I can't let them hear that I'm speaking English because you know if they find out I came here from New York, I'm going to get beat up. What about if you speak English with an exaggerated French accent? So they think you're just trying to communicate with a relative overseas. It's okay, mom. Yeah, I think your accent is going to give you away. The locals are putting up fake signs now.

Matilde found one this morning, taped to the wall across from the bakery. It looks official. It looks just like the signs taped to the barricades on the beach. Only this one says all non- to the barricades on the beach. Only this one says, All non-full-time residents must leave the island immediately and return to their primary homes. It also has this ominous phrase,

More our Corona collaborators. That's some World War II level resistance. There are definitely more people on the island now. When I take Octo out for his afternoon bike ride, we see tons of well-groomed couples canoodling on the pier, taking selfies, and lots of young women in fancy masks, all clutching the latest Leila Silmani novel. I know these are not locals,

because they don't flee when they see us coming. The real locals trip over themselves trying to run away from us. Of course Arcto is usually careening down the street on his rusty bicycle, waving a sword and screaming in Franglais about slaying the great Pyrrhus. I'd run too. At least I got him to stop with the fake coughing. There are also more people at the market now. And even though we've been here a month, we've gained no elevated status. The fishmonger still glares at me every time I buy tuna steaks or oysters.

And the butcher never returns my bonjour. The cheeseman seems to like us, mostly because he remembers us from last summer. and the butcher never returns my bonjour. The cheeseman seems to like us, mostly because he remembers us from last summer. Plus, Arcto will speak French with him. Yesterday, Arcto told him how happy he is because his cousin will soon be coming from Paris. The cheeseman shook his head. Nobody can cross the bridge anymore unless they have papers.

Papers proving primary residence. We aren't sure if this is true or wishful thinking. Or, perhaps, it's the cheeseman behind the flyers. This tension between locals and outsiders is spreading faster than the virus. I've heard stories about clashes taking place in Italy, Spain, Denmark, the UK. But the worst cases are in America. The Hamptons have been overrun with wealthy New Yorkers who fled to hunker down in their second homes. Most of the rental properties have been snapped up as well.

One local realtor bragged about renting a mansion to a fashion apparel CEO and his family for two million dollars. Many locals are not happy about the influx though. They worry the hospitals will be overrun. And they're right to worry. One New Yorker actually called the tiny hospital in Southampton to announce that she'd just tested positive and that she wanted to reserve a bed and a ventilator. Of course, the hospital ordered her to stay put in Manhattan, but she showed up anyway. With travel luggage. That's when the locals started talking about blowing up the bridges. My favorite example of resistance comes from Vinalhaven, Maine. A group of locals descended on some out-of-towners armed with guns and chainsaws.

They chopped down a tree and laid it across the driveway. Vigilante quarantine. But the three men who were living in the house weren't from out of town. They'd been renting the house since summer and working nearby. The locals were triggered by the New Jersey license plate. Vermont, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Texas, they're all now doing border checks. City people need to stop coming to the country, one police officer wrote on the Vinyl Haven Facebook page. We are full. Thank you. We're not on complete lockdown here in Holland,

so I can still go outside and take a walk through the park or something like that, but I'm way too neurotic to do that. But it is a possibility for other people who would wish to do so. Don't you have a beach you can flee to? Or like a canal side cabin? I mean, can't you try to just get out of the city? Well, I think you can try. But there are some areas like in Zeeland, which is a wonderful place. I used to go there all the time during the summer for vacation. They basically said you're no longer welcome here if you're

just here as a tourist. And there was a rather melodramatic article in an Amsterdam newspaper about a family that went there. And, you know, people were just angry at them. And they were like, you have to leave. And they were using all this sort of extreme right wing rhetoric. Like one big phrase was Eiche Volk eerst which means our own people first wow that that seems like more what you would hear with the way the right wing talks about immigrants i know they were talking now about like virus refugees somewhat jokingly i'm kind of shocked that this is going on especially in the netherlands because i imagine that rich people who have two houses are not used to hearing

our people first directed at them. No, exactly. I mean, I guess that's how they wound up in the newspaper, you know, that they were able to like make a big deal out of this. I think it's definitely like a symptom of what we have come to. Yeah. But I want to know how you're coping, Julie. People tend to have two tendencies in this crisis. Like half of the people seem to want to just immerse themselves in dystopian examples of like how bad it could get. And I was just like looking for like something positive. And I was just like, focusing on Taiwan. I spent about half a year living in Taiwan studying Chinese. And it's an island, which everyone thought was going to be one of the place's hardest hit.

And it hasn't been. That to me was just like so fascinating to look into that and just see like, oh, my God, it's not necessary for a democratic society just like crumble in the face of a crisis like this. And that is just fascinating. So what are they doing? They were so far ahead of things. Like December 31st, so this was like before China had even admitted that this virus was able to spread through human to human contact. They immediately stopped all the planes that were flying from Wuhan at the airport. They went into the airplane and inspected everyone on the airplane and like check them for symptoms and got their information so that they could keep track of them.

On January 12th, they sent a whole research team to Wuhan to actually look into things themselves. And you have to imagine like Taiwan isn't even part of the WHO, which is insane because China says, well, Taiwan is part of China, so they don't need to be. So they're completely shut out of all these meetings and conversations and like the sharing of research that's being done worldwide. And so they had to do all of that themselves. Wow. And they can't even tell the rest of the world what they're doing that works. No, exactly. And no more than five people have died up until now, which is insane. There's millions of people traveling between China and Taiwan.

And now when you arrive in Taiwan, you have to self-isolate for 14 days and they track if you're still at your home or at your hotel via your phone. And, you know, I think a lot of people, especially like up until like maybe a month or a month and a half ago would have said like, that's insane. And that's like a huge violation of privacy. But at the same time, like now everyone is in lockdown here in Europe. So I would much rather ask, ask just the people who are traveling to stay in lockdown for two weeks than to have the entire country be in lockdown, you know? Wow. Maybe travel is still possible in the future. Just you just have to add 14 days on one way. Yeah, I know.

Well, I mean, you know, up until there's been this whole discussion, especially in Europe happening now, you know, around flying and how flying is so bad. And then I know that they started this company now that's sailing from Europe to the US. And they're like, well, it takes like two to three weeks. And up until now, it was like, well, that's like completely unrealistic. But if we're going to be stuck with two weeks of quarantine, you might as well be sailing across the ocean during your quarantine period. So that's amazing. Right? Yeah. Even if you have it, they just lock you in that room. Exactly. And the COVID suite. And then they just like fumigate it

once you get out. I think this could be a new business opportunity for all the cruise ships. Two days before we fled New York, I met up with a friend at the Guggenheim to check out the new Rem Koolhaas exhibition, Countryside, the Future. I had no idea that this would be my last art show. Also, I had assumed that my friend, who is a professor of architecture, had invited me along because he thought I might enjoy the show with him. Oh, was I wrong. My friend had simply come to do some obligatory hate viewing. Countryside the Future is the latest mega project to emerge from the think tank studio

of architect and urbanist Rem Koolhaas. The scope is massive, the 98% of the earth's surface not occupied by cities. Countryside the future fills the entire rotunda of the Guggenheim. And as we rode the elevator up to the top to work our way down, my friend explained Koolhaus's process. He begins with an army of grad students. In this case, he conscripted soldiers from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, and the University of Nairobi. Then, he attacks the subject matter from all angles using both conventional and experimental approaches.

Countryside the Future explores radical changes in rural, remote, and wild territories collectively identified as countryside. On the top floor, we came across this giant photo of Coolhouse and his crew standing on a hill crest surveying the countryside below. It's shot from behind, so we see what Rem sees. To me, it looked like a battlefield. And I tried to take a photo, but this Joseph Stalin robot wouldn't get out of the way. On every floor, there are these robots, or Roombas, with historical photos bolted to them. They don't really do anything, they just

roll and spin around. But for some reason, this Stalin bot would just not get out of the way. So I wasn't able to take this image of Commander Rem and his generals planning their next moves on the country battlefield below. My friend read this photograph differently. He saw a religious image. These holy dudes, he said, have climbed this mountain to use their magical powers of observation. In all this, he said, pointing at the facts and figures and charts lining the rotunda walls of the museum, is the knowledge they gleaned from staring deep into the fields and farmlands. Rem Koolhaas and his grad students looked at modern conceptions of leisure and wildness,

large-scale planning by political forces, climate change, migration, human and non-human ecosystems, artificial and organic landscape alterations, and market-driven attempts at landscape preservation. Countryside the Future promotes itself as addressing urgent environmental, political, and socioeconomic issues. But the displays read like fifth-grade science fair presentations. The whole thing felt less like a trip to the global countryside and more an extended visit to Wikipedia. When we reached the bottom of the rotunda, I didn't feel like I'd learned anything new. Well, that's not entirely true. As we were walking out, one of the roving Roombas made a beeline for me, and I tripped

and fell, trying to evade it. And as I pulled myself up, I caught sight of the Stalin bot, high above, guarding the image of Rem and his generals. From this perspective, I could almost feel the patronizing condescension. Yeah, from this perspective, I felt something new. This process of turning observation into knowledge, it's an extractive process, but there are byproducts. And when it comes to the countryside, these byproducts are just as dangerous and toxic as the ones we get from fracking, drilling, and strip mining. The first movie we watched when we got to the island was Mikhail Hanukkah's Time of the Wolf. I will admit it was perhaps an audacious choice because the film opens with a cultivated

French-speaking family arriving at their summer home in a car filled with provisions. There's been a catastrophe, war, civil unrest, an infectious disease. We aren't told specifics, but George and Anne and their children, Eva and Benny, have fled the city to escape. But as soon as they open the door to their country house,

everything changes. Their home is already occupied. Squatters. The man is armed. George tries to calm things down, suggesting both families could coexist together. But this triggers the man with a gun.

And George is killed instantly. We only see Anne's face, Isabelle Hubert's face streaked with blood. So, with no possessions and no help from their neighbors, the family wanders off. They find a barn and take shelter. But in the night, Anne and Eva wake up to discover that Benny has wandered off. Anne goes looking for him, using her cigarette lighter as a torch, while Eva starts a fire, using handfuls of straw to mark the position of the barn. I saw this movie when it first came out, back in 2003, and in my memory, this is how the

film ends, with Anne running through the dark, trying to find her son, and eventually giving up, accepting that he's gone, and that the old world is finished. But my memory is false. That's not how the film ends at all. Anne and Eva do find Benny, and they march on, and eventually they come to an abandoned train depot where they wait with others for a train to come and take them back to the city, back to civilization. I don't know why these scenes didn't imprint themselves onto my brain. Perhaps I failed to grasp their meaning. Hanneke says he had originally written Time of the Wolf as a science fiction film,

but bowled over by the events of 9-11, he thought the audience might be ready, prepared for the idea of a present tense catastrophe, a present tense collapse of society. In Time of the Wolf, the countryside is a nightmare. Neighbor turns on neighbor, race upon race. The men in charge control things using guns and rape. Hope is reduced to a fantasy that things surely must be better in the city. We do see a train, but it doesn't stop for any of our characters. It is not moved by any cries or lamentations. Perhaps this is why I misremembered the ending, because the ending doesn't conform to a traditional disaster movie formula. There is no deus ex machina. There isn't even a train ex machina. It may have taken two viewings, but Time of the Wolf is now absolutely seared

into my brain. This isn't a movie about what might happen, but rather what will happen. What is happening. I am absolutely still hoping that everything's going to return to normal. I'm still filled with hope that in a few months there's going to be a vaccine and we'll all be able to return to the city. I'm hoping that by this time next year, we'll all be eating and drinking and shopping and working and talking and listening and traveling and consuming and reading and writing and living and dying normally. You have been listening to Benjamin Walker's Theory of Everything. This installment is called Countryside. Thank you. including The Illusionist from Helen Zaltzman. Find them all at radiotopia.fm.