They said that anadromous fish, like salmon, trout or cá linh migrate from one body of water to the other to reproduce.

It started almost like a horror movie themed with Holocaust, yet this time with scattering bodies of fish instead of human, big and small, buried half under the sand and half above the water. The smell of rotten marine animals, heavily fuming all over Ha Tinh, Vietnam, would intoxicate any citizen who dared to take a bite of these deadly creatures. Yet as the fish dissolved into the ground they collided with the bodies of many human beings, buried there fifty years ago when the city of Hue was heavily massacred. In 2019, 39 Vietnamese people from the same town were given the chance to live yet they chose to die, not in their own land but somewhere far away. Illegally. The three different narratives, separated by time and space, eventually came together as one: the sum of an overly stressed piece of land. The flux that was established through these different time-space events revealed the inner structure of violence and crimes. Their consequences, once had been triggered, continue to transform, penetrate, and influence as they sail through and overlap one another.

Meanwhile in Iceland, 2010, a volcano erupted like a real catastrophe. It has covered the sky of Europe in dark ashes. It has in fact, paralyzed Europe.

“For the first time, Europe turned into a real physical space that has been measured through tangible spatial and temporal coordinates.”

Flight industries were stagnated. Other dependencies? Convulsed. For 8 days, Europe seemed to have come to an end. But far away in the crowd, in the myriad of those vexed tempers, a tiny voice set forth a demand: “Test the planes! Test the planes! We need to fly!” and at an ineffable speed, the world hasted back to its norms. The norms of fumes, toxics, chemicals and plastics!

“The Earth is evil. We don’t need to grieve it.”

The Earth is 75% water. Its atmosphere are majorly nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide. A slight disruption to this ratio, in a matter of time, would throw us all into chaos. But these elements are not what we consume. What we consume is fish sauce—something delicious, something exotic, something fun! However, sauce is water: it is nitrogen, oxygen as well as carbon dioxide. It is the omnipresence that runs the factories, drives the cars, flies the airplanes. It is also the tsunami, the earthquake and the hurricane. It is a fluid that is embedded in the flux. And once it tumbles, it crumbles the world.

“The Earth is evil.” We ate a sauce and it made disasters! But what compassion there is for us when we are forever ruled by the language of the old? When our dogmatic system is indestructible? Can we even speak about our wrong doing? Let us not speak, let us “taste”.

The voice of an individual is not always an individual. It can be the sum of many individuals whose passions can be linked to promote the existence of an idea. Similar to how the world is constructed as a gigantic network. When you touch upon a node, the vibration travels through the connectors until it mobilizes the whole structure containing it.

In front of me is the artwork “Galaxies Forming along Filaments” of Tomás Saraceno.

I am borrowing the methodology of the interpretation Bruno Latour made on this artwork to talk about subjects that are too local and/or non-relatable to understand from a singular perspective. By doing this I spoke through the voices of others, as if I were justifying their vulnerability to subjectiveness. I agree that there is no true objectiveness. But coming from a background where hegemony is taking questionable turns, I rather see the benefits of multiple egos working together to form a multidimensional surface rather than a flat solid community that wanders in a shadeless void.

In this thesis is a myriad of different spatial and temporal localities. The majority of the examples are taken from events circulating around Vietnam but the stress is not on the improvement of Vietnamese identity but on its relation to other identities. The later half of the thesis introduces two parts: a view on an environmental intoxication and an analysis on two fictional narratives about disasters on Earth. With the inclusion of visual and theatrical expressions, I hope the words I deliver with flow more easily in the thinking process without major linguistic interruptions.

Every work is always a work-in-progress.

Fish sauce. It is foul, it is smelly. You can recognize it from five kilometers away. If you’re one of the unlucky ones who have ever swiped your sleeves into fish sauce, you will know how impossible it is to get it off. All of your friends were clean and good-smelling while you were lingered with a faint fishy smell, and the fact that three days before the Lunar New Years, you all went for the Vietnamese restaurant at the corner of the street. So next time you shall eat with care, you shall use chopsticks properly and you shall not play with fish sauce.

Fish sauce is a product. Regardless of its shelving environment—a European Albert Heijn supermarket in the Netherlands, or the Go Asia rip-off hub in Berlin, it has now been a common find amongst Western countries. Fish sauce has an interesting history as well as an interesting taste profile, which is controversially perceived both in the Western countries (in the global perspective and not the EU confined borders) and the Eastern ones. Its smell is awkwardly horrible in its raw form, resulting from rancid fermentation process of the protein, yet awkwardly umami for fine dining experience. It is commercially sold with “exotic” or “oriental” attached on the label or else very plasticky in terms of aesthetic to depict authenticity of its origin.

Umami is the only flavor profile that can achieve both surface and depth. Umami can be salty, savory or sometimes sweet but it must be able to send more perceptive signals to the brain than other stand-alone tastes. Umami can be experienced by consuming fermented products like soy sauce, fish sauce, pickles, mushrooms, cold-cut meats or cooked meats, and is superior than other tastes in that it leaves a sense of satisfaction and completeness. MSG (monosodium glutamate) is an artificially produced “umami” salt, much controversial in Europe but widely used and consumed in Asia. Natural umami is not hard to find but it requires one’s discern for gustatory harmony.

According to Edward Said, Orientalism is a half fictional half real reconstruction of the Eastern culture through the eyes of the Western culture. Orientalism started with the romanticized image of Arabian culture created by the French, the British and, later, Americans but is, in my opinion, not always confined to only such. Orientalism feeds idealistic images and concepts of Eastern cultures to Westerners in order to maintain interests but also to neutralize conflicting truths between the two. In Europe, there are debates and discussions about the Orient but not all of them interacts with or experiences actual opinions from the Orient. Although some stereotypes are true, it is more the ambiguity that created indestructible loopholes in the Western discourse about Orientalism. To treat Orientalism as a fairy tale is a total destruction of cultural diversities in Europe but to treat it as a self-driven entity is another misguided understanding.

Roughly 80% of the companies selling fish sauce or its cousins wrongly guessed the true origin of this age old food item, which was mostly diluted in the context of Asian cuisine including that of Chinese, Thai and Vietnamese. The common assumption blinds the fact that “Garum”, a fermented liquid similar to fish sauce, was drunken in Ancient Greece 2300 years ago in elegant goblets. “Garum”, sharing similar values to fish sauce, is now a dead artifact, a forgotten child of colonial history and cultural domination.

However, in the midst of all these conflicts, fish sauce, unlike cocoa, corns or tomatoes, etc, had a natural way of achieving its exotic status. It was not a desirable product; it was not economically profiting like gold and minerals, nor gastronomically profiting like sugar canes or cocoa. It was rejected, then reintroduced. It gained popularity only recently, when changes of conventions left society with more perceptions, more guts, more taste buds. Fish sauce verified its exotic status by first proving itself edible. One that was called “contaminating, dirty, unfiltered” now became the status of niche, of sub-culture and open-mindedness. However, before all the enlightenment, fish sauce was so outcasted by its perceived “spoilage” that its originality was left for those who dare to claim it, meaning Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and neighboring countries. Fish sauce’s connection to Vietnam is undoubtedly without the sum of other historical narratives (or “myths”), such as the Vietnam War, the Communists, the Soviet Union, Uncle Ho, the French or even the Thai etc. Although it was not outspoken in all of these stories, its essence remains: fish sauce is the intrinsic distillation of Vietnam.

Myth is theorized in the work of Roland Barthes, who owes the structure to Ferdinand de Saussure’s work on semiology. In Barthes’ logic, a myth operates on the plane of three components: “the sign, the signifier and the signified.” The signifier is the “image” of the object being signified. The signified is the formulated perception of that object in our minds. And the sign is a linguistic unit that communicate the former two concepts and can be changed according to different social and cultural context. When the sign becomes the signifier, for example, when “red wine” (taken from Barthes’ example) is used to point to another concept, like “social class” or its media, it results in a new added meaning, which becomes the signified. Using Barthes’ formula, “fish sauce”, in its second order meaning, can refer not only to the smelly brown liquid but to “Vietnamese exotic dishes”, “swampy jungle”, “rude restaurant staff” or even "third world country". These are highly externalized conclusion of Vietnamese culture but not necessarily the same to that of the Vietnamese.

In places where the fish biomass is in excess, people must invent some preservation method to keep it from turning over. The reason is that fish, due to its high percentage of unsaturated fatty acids which oxidize outside of the cold water environment, is naturally more perishable than other meats. This makes fish a thrilling gem of all food items as eating it requires not only good manners but also good timing. Beside this momentary aspect, fish provides a luxurious mouth feel when eaten and requires its consumers to undergo all sophisticated layers of skins and bones to reach this luxury. Cooking fish also demands great attention and is not popular amongst busy home kitchens. A valuable trading product, fresh fish, out of all the great diversity of food, is the primary wealth of Vietnam. The secondary wealth is of fish sauce, or more elaborately, fish in its fermented stage. Fish sauce is not less delicious than its fresh counterpart. It is widely used as a flavor enhancer in various dishes in Vietnam and is one of the country’s the main protein source. The production of fish sauce, although equipment-friendly, involves a lot precise measurements to keep it from crossing the line with rancidity. During its fermentation stage, the fatty acids in fresh fish, once so detested yet now so cherished for its perishability, disintegrate into lower molecules, enzymes and bacterias under the help of salt, heat and time to built up the flavor profile this product. Once complete, fermented fish is distilled, bottled and either kept for use internally or transported for use outside of its production environment. The two status of fish, fresh and fermented, have transformed into two desirable expectations, its short-lived decadence and its noble aging. Here we see the two images of Vietnam, already shaped by its products beyond its border: a place for people to come and experience, and a product for people to try, to taste, to judge and to bring home. But it is wrong to assume that the existence of fish sauce in modern Western countries derived from the colonial period, when Western voyagers brought back “souvenirs” from exotic countries. Their main exploitation were mainly lands, women, minerals and raw ingredients and not smelly cultured products. The reasons for this denial of ethnicity, as can be seen in many Vietnam-War-themed movies, are due to hygiene and conventions. Back then, fish sauce was considered a product of the “others”, a product that went against what the Westerners perceived as normal and edible. It was strange, unfamiliar, alien, contaminating, dirty and ridiculous. “Trying to taste these food can, in fact, be seen as a sign of bravery.”

“Roast beef, it’s not too bad. Try some, Jerry, and pass it around. Urn...Captain, I don’t know how you feel about this shrimp but if you’ll eat it, you’ll never have to prove your courage again.”

The mobilization of fish sauce to the West was of self-deportation. Fish sauce leaked through the border of Vietnam by its makers, the Vietnamese, who travelled oversea to establish new lives. In this way, it seemed, to an extent, a reversed colonization. But the Vietnamese did not come to Europe as conquerers, they came as refugees. Their decisions were not made but are nested in the decisions of others who had the power to control and prevail the ramification of war.

During the Fall of Saigon in 1975, millions of Vietnamese ran away from their home, by boats, by planes and by foot. They were commonly known as “boat people”.

“Various names have been applied to these events. The Vietnamese government officially calls it the "Day of liberating the South for national reunification" (Vietnamese: Giải phóng miền Nam, thống nhất đất nước) or "Liberation Day" (Ngày Giải Phóng), but the term "Fall of Saigon" is commonly used in Western accounts. It is called the "Ngày mất nước" (Day we Lost the Country), "Tháng Tư Đen" (Black April), "National Day of Shame" (Ngày Quốc Nhục) or "National Day of Resentment" (Ngày Quốc Hận) by many Overseas Vietnamese who were refugees from communism.”

It was the period when the Northern Communists took over the Southern U.S Allies, uniting an independent Socialist Republic of Vietnam. However, what people were not aware of was the incoming wave of re-education camps and the obliteration of wealthy and intellectual families. Vietnamese who were against the Communists fled first, and those who were ex-communists, after realizing the brutality of the regime, fled after. A majority of them, of Northern and Southern origins, settled in United States, United Kingdom and Western Europe with some exceptions going to Taiwan, Malaysia, Philippines or even Israel.

They said that anadromous fish, like salmon, trout or cá linh migrate from one body of water to the other to reproduce. It is for one to decide whether this is a question of duty or passion, that these fish chose to oppose the law of gravity by going upstream and jumping with all of their mighty muscles in order to give birth and die. They could have lived longer by not moving at all but they could have also been caught by fishermen in great amount if their irresistible deliciousness stand much more chance than the future of their next generation. Therefore, their dearest instinct no doubt is to move.

Vietnamese who came to Europe, after enduring various adversities along the path of migration, find new difficulties in the foreign lands. Naturalization was one problem but the difference of perception and tradition was another. While the intellectuals and the alliances of the old Southern regime managed to adapt quickly, the rest of the civilians who were farmers, factory workers, exported laborers from the first wave of immigrants struggled to establish and sustain, thus were refrained to a secluded community that circulated its own capital flow. This means self-employed restaurants, nail salons, pawn shops and market vendors where Vietnamese were served by Vietnamese. It was like home.

“In the wonderful and diverse realities of Vietnam, there is a reality not so many people here are able to unglue from themselves, that is the reality of Pho. That very reality of Pho is woven into the very reality of the greatness of this little nation. […]
Around the lake in Otaniemi, we sat down together beneath the green pines to investigate on our guts, which seemed to show their remembrance for something very far far away. Indeed from the day we dragged our suitcases through many lands, it has been many months; at home, Hai Phong was completely turned over, the North was liberated… But we tried to steer our trivial conversation into the heart of the gastronomical problem, that why haven’t we been eating so well, as I mentioned earlier. One of the fellows pointed straight to the grassy floor bank of the Finnish lake, letting out, ”If for a big tray of Pho landing here, I would wolf down six portions of it straight!”. Out of harmony, we all cheered. It turned out that, in the last few days our bodies have been withered, because of territorial dislocation, because of gustatory “cacophony”, because of homesick. “Land-sick”. In that sickness, we longed for Pho, a rural image of a soup bowl that could potentially solve our common mystery. We longed for praising it.”

The status of war refugee obviously was not a voluntary choice, so as deeming one’s identity as tradable goods in return for shelter and comfort. Cultural materials of the Vietnamese or any nationalities—from food, traditional clothings, to art and literature—demand specific agendas to develop in foreign markets without loosing its essence to popular media and false representation. These agendas can only be born and nurtured in the native lands, where it is allowed to manifest through the understandings and knowledge of the native individuals. Without this realization, cultural identity slips away very easily. Even though we might agree that under the pressure of adaptation, an immigrant can occasionally eliminate unnecessary cultural traits in order to progress. But in an alienated status, immigrants in general are not even allowed to make such selections. Their choices are supervised by the conventions of the dominant culture thus in order to plea the favor of that dominance, Vietnamese immigrants most likely had to compensate and sacrifice the possession of their own conventions. In the long run, this becomes a form of cultural “bleaching” which disintegrates the bonding and value of identity and heritage.

Pho and Ca Ri became the primary images of Vietnam in the West, reflecting the Northern and Southern Vietnamese, respectively, who migrated there. No wonder a flashback to the Vietnamese history enjoys the presence of “two”, of “division”, and of civil war. As if it was the only marker of the Vietnamese history.

While Vietnamese gained petty success in running their business, they were gaining it on the on the model of “cultural prostitution”. They gave away labors, knowledge, tastes, “possessions” in which they obeyed the desires of others. The new generations, their children and their grand children, will naturally hold less and less attachment to their roots. They will grow prioritizing their relevant environment and get acquainted with cultures they are nurtured by. Unless being questioned by their genetic features, these generations are blurred from the understanding of their own roots, from the understanding of freedom as opposed to obligation, in which the later paved the way to their privileged upbringing. Being “bought” as voluntary modern slaves, first-generation Vietnamese felt owning to the colonizers their lives today. They identities are not Vietnamese but the sum of others’ “Vietnamese-ness”. Their freedom is an agreement; as well as their children.

The best way to guarantee success is in the continuous supply of the most “authentic” therefore the most “idealistic” Phở and Ca Ri. It sells.

The Vietnamese believed in this illusion because after the war, it opened a door to a better life. And by clinging on to such believe, they also wish to clean their shameful past, telling others to help themselves, to leave and to forget their corrupted land. The Vietnamese are their own products—fish sauce. Through mass purification catalyzed by geographical dislocation and cultural bleaching, they arrived here with less dirt and mud. Less intensity and flavors. What was left was only an image, a beautiful bowl of soup with clear broth and silky smooth noodles. The side dipping fish sauce is not brown but blond, showing its representational significance but not cultural significance.

“It is not merely there, just as the Occident itself is not just there either. We must take seriously Vico's great observation that men make their own history, that what they can know is what they have made, and extend it to geography: as both geographical and cultural entities—to say nothing of historical entities—such locales, regions, geographical sectors as "Orient" and “Occident" are man-made. Therefore as much as the West itself, the Orient is an idea that has a history and a tradition of thought, imagery, and vocabulary that have given it reality and presence in and for the West.”

Where does Central Vietnam play a part in these events? Central Vietnam to some foreigners, is a forgotten land that was, paradoxically, not forgotten. Nurtured in this land is the city of Hue, a city heard of both fairy tales and nightmares; a city so often merged with the South yet so not it left visitors struck with awe. Hue is an important historical city. It belonged to the kings and queens—the most prominent being the Nguyễn empires—therefore was the royal capital since feudal time in 1802. Under the French ruling system, Hue established nationally renowned universities, proving its dedication to education and development. Most of the universities were established to forward the eradication of Vietnamese-Chinese relationship such as Confucian values and Nom language, and replace them with the French and the renewed national language, now known officially as the Vietnamese language. This was considered controversial to the national spirit of Vietnamese but maneuvering through some agreements allowed the Vietnamese to take advantage of the education and gain intellectual independence from the French. Compared to other cities in Vietnam, improvement in educational infrastructure in Hue was the most progressive. However with or without the effects of colonization, Hue people were known for their of knowledge, elegance and reservedness. However, Hue suffered two major battles in history, the old Nguyen Offensive in 1650s and the Tet Offensive in 1968. The battles were not originally “owned” by the city per se, but the people there, especially those in the Tet Offensive, were sentenced for their indifference to military practice, which was considered unpatriotic at that time. Since most of the bloodsheds in Vietnam were civil, Vietnamese conditioned themselves to built political walls that sits on top of the corpse of their ancestors.

Gianh River is a river situated at the “separation” of the North and the South of Vietnam. It was not particularly a correct “land”-mark, spatially speaking, and should not be viewed as such because its true geographical location is not in the exact middle of the country. Gianh river is more of a temporal separation. It happened in time and in the memories of the Vietnamese people during the old civil war in the 16th and 17th century. As history advances, the separation moved and relocate itself. It contracted as one politics demanded and expanded as the other requested. It was never a fixed border, but a fixed image of self-inflicted pain, driven by lies and betrayal. Gianh River has had another name—Blood River, reflecting the blood shed at countless battles there.

Hue stayed truthful to its land during the Tet Offensive in 1968 when the need of fleeing was growing fast. In fact the decision to stay was definitive because all of Hue citizens were already buried deep in the soil during the Hue massacre in the same year, leaving very few to take part in the “boat trip” in 1975. They were raped, tortured, killed, shot in the head, and bombed by the weight of political conflicts. The brutality forced upon this small land was fatal, and since the change of the regime, it was also kept unspoken. Even until now, no one really grasped the full scope of what happened during the Hue massacre. Only a few who survived were able to speak about their direct experiences. But tell tales can hardly pass through validation at all, especially when debates were restricted and passions were tamed for the “safety” of the disseminators. Day by day, the ghosts of the deceased scream for answers yet only questions remains: Was it out of mere hatred? Out of thirst for victory? Or perhaps just out of pure pleasure? For what is known, the city of Hue was silenced from its loss.

During Tet Offensive in 1968, another river was contaminated by the duty of “separation”—Huong River, or Perfume River. The naming was due to a beautiful smell thought to be emitting from the river itself but in fact, was emanated from a medicinal plants nearby. The Tet Offensive, leading to the Battle of Hue in the same year, was fought by Northern Vietnamese Communists and the Southern Army of the Republic of Vietnam. It was during the Vietnamese New Year’s Eve and more than fifty thousand people were killed, not only soldiers but innocent civilians—women, children.

Interview with a war victim: This conversation happened in the realm of digital space, meaning either in the form of messaging, posting, commenting, blogging or video chat. It is a discussion and not a confirmation on what happened during the Hue massacre. Therefore, all arguments should be taken as subjectively as possible. The keywords in this conversation were encrypted, as it was necessary to protect the interviewee’s right to speak freely of his/her opinions.

T: When you were born, was it during the Vietnam War? Or had it happened before already?
M: Near the end. When it was most devastating. 1968 was the Hue massacre. 1972 the American B52s bulldozed all of Hanoi. And 1975, the war ended. I was born in 1969. All the time I was hungry for food.
T: Ah yes 1975, Vietnam was united.
M: Say we stick with “ended”. Why bear the word “united” when it was the beginning of actual “separation”? It was about the psyche not those scribbles on paper…
T: Hue massacre, how did it happened?
M: At the beginning of 1968, Vie?t Mi\nh (Vietnamese Communists) fell into the trap of V/NC:H (S.A. Rep. of Vietnam), attacking empty houses in Hue like a mad army, realizing later they’ve been deceived. At the end of 1968, Vie?t Mi\nh plotted another invasion and killed everyone in Hue, partly to avenge and partly to erase the families of V/NC:H. Hue actually witnessed two massacres, the Vie?t Mi\nh army and the Hue families, died under the hands of Vie?t Mi\nh.
T: Vie?t Mi\nh are Vie?t Co^ng but since we are Vietnamese so we must use Vie?t Mi\nh?
M: Yes. And because I’m also a Northerner.
T: And the Vie?t Mi\nh, were there many of them killed in the trap of V/NC:H?
M: Yes. Many were killed. My grandmother told me.
T: Where were people when Vie?t Mi\nh attacked the empty houses?
M: They evacuated to the outskirt.
T: And when they moved back to Hue thinking they were safe, they were avenged by the Vie?t Mi\nh?
M: That’s right.
T: To erase the V/NC:H?
M: That’s right. There were innocents but there were also anti-communists.
T: “Better to kill everyone than to leave one enemy alive.”
M: That’s right. And it’ll never be written in history books.
T: So cruel.
M: It’s war, my dear.
T: Vietnamese killing each other.
M: Vietnamese killing each other. What a civil war indeed.

No one outside of Hue has ever truly tried its highly sophisticated cuisine. Every dish is so much work that even mothers are not bothered to cook it at home. The joy of bringing the kids to the local street bistro produces way more happiness to the whole family and that is why in Hue, only street bistros can provide the full spectrum of plating and eating. Yet, if a Hue person decides to cook, the plate will reflect the persona so much you can see through his/her history and lifestyle.

M: The tradition of cutting meat chunky in the North was from the habit of small-town mentality of “collectiveness” . Every property had to be shared with the neighbors so cutting your meat big was to share the generosity of your family. That’s why in old times the rural towns of Northern Vietnam always had a communal house and a well. Central Vietnamese were also suffering from cold weather but they preferred to stay inside and keep their manners also inside. This is why Hue’s architecture always had a “tấm bình phong” at the facade.
T: What does all of this say about the eating etiquette of Hue?
M: Central Vietnamese do eat quite salty but they don’t cut chunky. Especially Hue people; they do like to taste and experience many flavors, but scarcity of food did not allow them to be lavish so they served very small portion yet with many variety of things. They do also like to serve many types of fish sauce. Each of the dish has its own dipping sauce.
T: But why do they like to taste the variety? Is it their personality? Or their living conditions? Were they rich or poor, for example?
M: Hue people like to pay attention to details. They don’t like to brag or to gather for that purpose. They want to stay focus and respectful in a small and neat family space. Everywhere there are rich and poor people but Hue people don’t live for the show, they are more reserved. Partly I think because of the influence of the many royal families that resided there.

Hue people love their fish sauce are connected to their lands, through their food and through their memories. The violence inflicted on them have passed but that did not mean that it has stopped. The “infection” will continue to spread.

From far away, you can only see a man wrapped in many layers, protecting himself from the distanced sun. It is getting hotter and hotter every year. With this much water, he might not survive but due to his reserved nature he speaks only so surely; he is safe. What he has not known: he is alone. The sun is so bright and so it will burn. Eventually, he will die.

On the 23rd of October 2019, 39 Vietnamese people from Ha Tinh or Quang Tri, Central Vietnam, known as “truck people”, were found dead in the trail of a refrigeration truck in Essex, United Kingdom. The news was immediately covered in many international papers and featured in various digital platforms. The number of concerns were unusually high, which was hard to understand because news like this, especially to the Vietnamese, was not the most surprising thing that ever happened on this land.

Trafficked victims are mobilized in many different ways. But the term “trafficking” always provokes a very specific series of procedures and participants, from the least to the most traceable ones: the criminal network, the traffickers, the victims, the drivers and the vehicles. Amongst them, the criminal network has the most unclear identity, which is kept perpetually anonymous. This invisibility becomes an efficient weapon of trafficking as it runs on the plane of absented authorship, which allows accusation to be dispersible and exchangeable. Therefore trafficking is more flexible in its format and its blame can be expanded to other network of passive agents: such as the corporations, the consumers and other type of globalized operations. These agents indeed extracts, out of a single criminal case, the guilty individual and replaces it with the public, but they allow the public to have direct contact with the crime, to think of it as the consequence of their daily actions. There is no instant cure to human trafficking but to stop it means to discontinue whatever is making it moving, to discontinue a specific habit of the public that could condition an environment where trafficking is not needed and where such criminal network could no longer perform.

Trafficking itself, as dictionaries define, is not involving only people, but also animals, goods and services. The imbalanced distribution of these elements is the most relevant cause of poverty, despair, and forced mobility, which is obviously the biggest profit to human trafficking. Disclosure of one agent is not enough to communicate and urge responsibility, as can be seen from the attempted investigation of the Essex deaths. Disclosure needs to happen on the broader plane, involving much more complex factors and events that could introduce a more global movement. Such movements require one to think from the local perspective but not withdrawn to it, to expand one event to various surrounding ones and to profoundly chain them together. To treat it as connectable “edges” and not as enclosing “containers” of network, as Bruno Latour put it.

How events can be unwrapped into much wider network of cause and effect is shown in concepts such as “butterfly effect”, “domino effect”, “resonance”, “envelope”, “spheres” or in the case of Rob Nixon “slow violence”. They all engage in trying to bridge events together in so-called natural and non-static world. What people do not realize is whatever happened to the 39 deceased immigrants are indirect repercussions of problems such as globalization, capitalism, environmental damage and of over-production. Events happening on a global scale usually are transnational and not visible on the local level, where people work, consume, socialize and commute on a daily basis. These daily actions are dissolved into the surrounding space, faded out, but when accumulated and enlarged, they can give birth to unexpected crisis.

Imagine each action having its own waveform. It starts with a peak and ends with a slope. And the sum of the two is a set. Each set is usually short and localized, and can be repeated many times by many action makers. Because of its short duration, each set is ideally a life cycle of its own and dies out quickly enough for other different sets to be born. This is why an action maker sees only one's own set and is blinded to others’. A set can be repeated many times, and only identical sets can multiply. When sets are multiplied, meaning identical ones are born at different points in the world, they create tension peaks. Depending on the frequency of this multiplication, tension peaks will layer up and leads to explosions. When that happens, peaks (belonging to the sets) collapse and become a new set. This set will die out on its own but because of its size and duration, it lives long enough to normalize new born sets and thus create more tensions and explosions. If viewed this way, one purchase of imported fish sauce from the supermarket can lead to one major trafficking crisis. The purchase is a set, the importing of fish sauce is also a set, the plane carrying such is also a set. All of them can multiply as there are many purchases, sauces and planes. The two possible tensions are the market of the purchaser and that of the purchased. The wealth issue is a layered tension. And finally the trafficking crisis is an explosion. In a way, one action can have the quality of both a set and an explosion. The death of 39 Vietnamese in Essex is one example of such explosion.

Slow violence is given to fill in the gap of the unexpected crisis. To reuse Karl Popper’s quote in Emanuele Guidi’s writing, “ ‘It is a fact that we can prophesy solar eclipses with a high degree of precision, and for a long time ahead. Why should we not be able to predict revolutions?’.” Slow violence is the hidden cues to Popper’s riddle of revolution. It is the “threats that never materialize in one spectacular”. It is the micro-actions that appear in many different forms such as as casualties, physical violence, material havocs or even revolutions, and are repeatedly executed in such long exposure that they become hidden behind more “spectacular, immediately sensational, and instantly hyper-visible” form of threat. If so then, is everything unexpected? No. We know from the Essex deaths that the possibility of human trafficking was very likely. We knew it as the Americans took their first steps in Vietnam, as the immigrants started to build their pawn shops, as the biggest supermarket being launched, as we ate our first mango and as we took the first picture on Instagram with an iPhone. It was already known that such violence would happen and it would if we continue our bad influences but never have we thought twice. Never as we introduce any action. How come if we have heard about starvation, about cheap labor, about global warming and all the deleterious destructions of the world but never have we predicted the human trafficking in the UK? It is not about the precision in that vision but about the likeness, or closeness of that possibility that we could get. Indeed specularity can fall from the sky into quick violence in order to manipulate and to disperse its attentions. They appear to borrow the realness of physical wounds and dead bodies, to prolong the distraction of slow violence. But in the end, they never break the existed chain of all violence. To find out about violence, therefore, is to trace from their most abstract to their most specific connections, whether or not with the influence of specularity.

Three or four years ago, I remembered when suddenly my mother stopped buying fish from the open market, even from our favorite dealers living not so far away from our house. I asked why, as I was not such a big meat eater and as a growing teenager, I demanded other healthy proteins. And she told me that all the fish were poisoned (“nhiễm độc”) near the sea in Central Vietnam and we wouldn’t be able to eat sea fish for the next five months.

In the midst of its chaos, the explosion of a factory in Ha Tinh reached a family of 1300 kilometers away. However, the mother’s announcement, regardless of its great spirit, posed minimal urgency to the kids as the family lives obviously way too far from the affected areas and has plenty of other means to obtain delicious fish—from other coasts in the South or from their relatives touring in and out of Europe. Although grounded from the east coast’s sea creatures, the kids were not first-, not even second-hand victims of this chain of events. To be involved in the chain, one has to accept the nature of insufficient supplies, and for them, obtaining fish was as easy as it could get. But for the people of Ha Tinh, the disaster—namely the great massacre of fish by Formosa Factory, was a big blackhole in their lives. In local villages, fish merchants were horrified, families were starved and the rest bear the daily traumatic graphics of floating dead fish. In the news circle, dilapidated journalists with censorship devices created stories filled with “mysterious” in their headlines. In the authority sphere, governments and law makers surrendered to corruption and refused to give transparent answers. Between parties, some investigations was done but so poorly that they mislead the cause of the whole event all together. However, the most persistent issue was that although very active, every discussion happened in the circle of the politicians, the private owners, the reporters and the activists but not the inflicted citizens. So from the eyes of the direct witnesses, it was like dark magic that took over the sea—a giant monster, an evil spirit, an angry demon swallowing up all souls of innocent beings.

Before the official announcement of the reports, the government even assured, without investigation, that no evidence belonging to Formosa was found for the discharge. Several months passed, citizens were getting impatient and peaceful protests emerged in various both national and international cities, including Taipei. In Vietnam, the situation turned around; instead of protecting the citizens’ claims, authorities were sent to torture and diminish the protesters, violating human rights. The method, in short, was “dirty”.

“One of the activists we spoke to, from one of four cities that we investigated, told Amnesty International that police slept in cars parked outside his home overnight in the days leading up to the previous demonstrations and that he continues to be under surveillance. He and another activist told Amnesty International separately that they have been told that if they attempt to travel to demonstrations they will be involved in traffic accidents.[…]

Amnesty International interviewed one bystander who said that when men in plain clothes attempted to arrest a young woman, who was with two young children, they slapped both children in the face.”

The report was three and a half pages long, filled with action movie vocabularies such as “beaten, threatened, ripped, grabbed, punched” and one outstanding “your life is worth less than that phone”. True, some lives in Vietnam do worth less than a phone. Ha Tinh, according to the People Committee of Ha Tinh Province report, has a GDP per capita of 4,579,000 VND per year, and is worth less than a few thousand phones. With its future facing poverty, poor education, criminality and now: food shortage, Ha Tinh is “blessed” to be still considered an independent city, if not a national burden. But the subject of such independence is questionable. As citizens who realize the fall of higher system of power can not base their decision on primal needs, where such are considered reactions rather than decisions. Thus in the case of the 39 Essex deaths, if the “truck people” were to blame for the wrong-doings, then the solutions would have been to tame suicidal rates and not “sexual and labor exploitation, domestic slavery, and other exploitative practices”.

However, protests propagated from the Formosa crisis did not surprise the government because most of the political activities in Vietnam have been controlled since the 50s. What surprised them was that the opposition was very determined and expressive, especially when the government’s initial trajectory was to put the Vietnamese’s relationship with Taiwanese factories on a negative level. In times of colonial war, this unpatriotic behavior can result in many days of re-educational programs, where the concept of “enemy” was assessed and re-orientated to the “external”—the “demons” from the West, from America, from China. The glory and merits gained by defeating the such “enemy” is while the highest form of pride, is also the highest suppression of truth. Truth soon to be unveiled by dead fish.

“The real object to be suppressed by these operations (fumigating narcotic plants) was not narcotics as such but the given ‘enemy’ as understood within the Cold War paradigm, wherein the US government sought to eradicate leftist movements of the global south informed by Marxist-Leninism.”

However, the biggest guilt that the Vietnamese government has condemned was not the physical violence, although it was one of the major consequences, but the conversion of an innocent and peaceful protest, which was meant to justify the many loss of lives, into a highly personalized national crime. Converting “environmental concerns” into “anti-governmental movement”.

Vietnam is not a paradise full of clear beaches and high greeneries. Many places are still suffering from poverty and crimes; the majority of the population is still “eating” the global hunger index. Its enduring oppressions and corruptions are still hinder by propaganda, surveillance, censorships, foreign investment and hyper-tourism. The only cultural image that escaped Vietnam is unfortunately an “odorless” one. The more we contribute to this flux, which means the more stress we put on the economy and financial capacity of Vietnam, the quicker we arrive at quick and globalized violence. “A new wave of 39” will resurrect and England will be “flooded” with dead fish again.

When I recalled the Formosa disaster in 2016, I missed badly the taste of mackerel, or swordfish, or bream, or whatever it was, stewed with caramel sauce and a handful of chilis. Every morning was an exciting trip to the daily street market to witness the scattered display of fresh fish in a bright container splattered periodically with water from a malfunctioned tap. There were less than a dozen units, all different in shapes and sizes. There was no label whether it was a salmon or a tuna. There were actually no salmon nor tuna. The “retailer” shouted out a suspiciously random name and I marched home immediately double checking on Google. It was not a place for expected products. It was for the unexpected. And to cope with that, you have to know you live with alternatives and you feel good about it.

Before the official announcement of the reports, the government even assured, without investigation, that no evidence belonging to Formosa was found for the discharge. Several months passed, citizens were getting impatient and peaceful protests emerged in various both national and international cities, including Taipei. In Vietnam, the situation turned around; instead of protecting the citizens’ claims, authorities were sent to torture and diminish the protesters, violating human rights. The method, in short, was “dirty”.

“…this almost unreal situation gave, for a few days, a different taste to the meaning of traveling itself. The easiness, with which most Europeans have always been able to move freely, suddenly changed and what seemed to be almost a vested right, temporarily had been suspended. Those who had the urgency to travel, either renounced or kept on populating airports … Those who, for whatever reason, had to reach a destination at any cost, they did it by understanding that traveling doesn’t mean to move along a straight line… For many people, probably for the first time, Europe turned into a real physical space that has been measured through tangible spatial and temporal coordinates.”

The way the ashes of Eyjafjallajökull volcano spread over Europe in 2010 was like the way the fish carcasses spread over the coast of Vietnam in 2016. The only difference was that the later’s community was living under the demand of nature and the former’s community under the demand of culture. Under the demand of nature, one has to survive with its available resources and withstands its inconsistency. Under the demand of culture, however, technological advancement allows one to live with a kind comfort that hinders the inconsistency of nature. That kind of comfort is always met too quickly for the community to feel the need of adaptation. Both community has its weakness, one is not advanced enough to protect itself and one is too advanced it is weakened by its own dependency.

In the Netherlands, 17.18 million Dutch citizens are currently sitting on a major pile of cow manure, but only a few can “smell” its methane surplus. The rest is still enjoying Gouda cheese for its breakfast, lunch and dinner.

The first item on the list of Eyjafjallajökull report is to ensure “Aircraft availability for surveillance flights over the eruption area”. The goal of this measurement firstly is to promote the use of aircrafts. It means that they should be made powerful enough to withstand volcano ashes and to perpetually feed data as they fly. During the eruption, aircrafts were the most vulnerable, yet the most demanding form of traveling, especially when heightened by its absence. If aircraft industries can ensure the provision of technologies for scientific flights, they can do so as well for recreational flights. The rising power of carbon-fueled aircrafts means that the next Eyjafjallajökull might expect three times the amount of carbon dioxide emitted, one third from the volcano and two third from the flight industries. Soon when aircrafts are made indestructible, the holiday-makers will not even notice the ash right under their noses. “According to the Environmental Transport Association, by the end of today (19 April 2010) the flight ban will have prevented the emission of some 2.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide since the first flights were grounded. The volcanic eruption has released carbon dioxide, but the amount is dwarfed by the savings. Based on readings taken by scientists during the first phase of Eyjafjallajökull activity last month, the website Information is Beautiful calculated the volcano has emitted about 150,000 tonnes of CO2 each day.”

If we are still upset by the flights we missed during the Eyjafjallajökull eruption, we must then see if knowing about carbon dioxide can justify our conviction. Carbon dioxide (CO2), as everybody has known from elementary school, is an odorless, colorless, and non-flammable gas. It is almost thought as the opposite to oxygen, unofficially of course, but is paired with oxygen so often—from fire extinguishing to photosynthesizing to death—that the two can reductively represent lives on Earth. Although colorless, within the human circulatory system, carbon dioxide passing through the blood veins is seen in blue, while oxygen acting in the same manner is seen in red. The origin of blue might come from the observation of the face turning a bluish hue when under extreme shortage of oxygen, for example, when a person is holding his breath or is choking from respiratory problems. Nevertheless on a global scale, this “blue” poses no threats to our society. It is not a spectacular, destructive, “sensational” nor “hyper-visible.”

“In normal room air, carbon dioxide percentages are very low (around 0.04%) […] carbon dioxide at low concentration has little, if any, toxicological effects. At higher concentrations (>5%), it causes the development of hypercapnia and respiratory acidosis. Concentrations of more than 10% carbon dioxide may cause convulsions, coma, and death. Carbon dioxide levels of more than 30% act rapidly leading to loss of consciousness in seconds.”

The reason we can not “witness” the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere is because it takes a lot of time for it to reach from 0.04% to 5%—from transparent to “blue”. Within this time, technological development allows humanity to invent more polluting devices such as cars, airplanes, factories, etc, but our ethical concerns were not strong enough to project future scenarios where long-term effects started to find its place. Next to oxygen, airplane is the closest “sibling” to carbon dioxide. Both are airborne, cloaked by the clouds, stealth from the human grounded eyes and are operating their pollution at the stratospheric level of the Earth. But an element of nature can not convict such crime unless a human, through the use of his tool, deliberately command it to do so. Looking back at a well-known operation—Operation Ranch Hand in Vietnam, from 1961 to 1971— herbicides (2,4-D), (2,4,5-T) and (TCDD) were spread lavishly over the dense jungle of the Southern terrain of Vietnam by the U.S. Air Force, to reveal military bases of the Viet Cong and deprive them from their food source. The herbicides, known as Agent Orange, was known by color of the drums that carried them. Some people was informed about what the herbicide could do including defoliating various types of plant but not many was informed about what Agent Orange could do more. After the war ended, people were left in shock as they witness the “Agent” defoliating the future of many organic entities there, penetrating into the fatty tissues (especially that of fish and human) and genetically mutating them from generations to generations. But the damage did not start only from the toxicity of herbicides, it also started from the applauded efficiency of airplanes, being above and fast in speed. A machine of industrialized society, it facilitates from A to B the unstoppable mobilization of things, of products, of people, of toxins and as well that of wars.

Since when flying was invented?

The purpose of airplanes
the purpose of air travel
the meaning of travel—travail,
to endure, to work.

Flying is invented to take the laborious part out of traveling, to disregard physical obstacles, unexpected trajectories and natural risks. The height of the aircraft possesses a dominating view over the world. It is not the pilot that demands this view it is the passengers, the consumers, who feel ridiculously safe on board, who do not have to labor through lands and oceans, who from a peasant’s view is now able to view that of a king’s.

Agent Orange,
the joy of flights!
It is pleasant to watch the peaceful world
from the cabin, calm and beautiful,
the earth is blue, the plants are green
the inventor of planes is the inventor of crash,
the fear of flights is the fear of crushed dreams.
Back to the ground when life is so high up?
Poor people don’t fly,
they look up and find,
the shadows sometimes are focused,
but sometimes, they are blurred
by fumes by smokes, or by fear.

Oh seeing orange shadows,
of a dream so crushing, can’t be more real.
Lands were eaten bits by bits,
a giant rodent rummaging through,
not only plants but people too,
Agent Orange it was,
it’s yours too.

As events are layered and layered together, it is no longer possible to detect the root of disasters. Was it human who catalyzed the disorder of nature or was it nature that injured human’s existential condition, which agitates the comfort of technology and reintroduce again the destruction of nature? Why is it still happening? As Latour’s argument puts it: it is the impossibility of invoking moral requirements from “nature” as “nature” from the perspective of a tree can not be forced to exist but essentially the tree has already inhabited the “being” or “existing” without being told to do so. The expression in form of an advice, a command or visual clue has already been smeared by the device of culture which we called language. And within our existing language, inquiring someone to follow nature is a part of deliberation, of intention and of which the moral posed against the normative charge of “nature” that initially should not be part of “order” at all.

The limitation of language is precisely why even the hypothesis of “nature” as seen in discourses like the Anthropocene can not surpass its own normalization. The highly apocalyptic view of nature in the end still shatters to pieces under the power of human’s hyper dumb composure, whose mind-game tries to conquer the path of superiority and immortality. We concern other planets to be of our future possessions, but our way to hinder the incoming death of climate change is only to stack ourselves behind air conditioners. We believe that in the midst of this ignorance, the Anthropocene—a concept whose aim strikes no further than the nominal glory of the International Chronostratigraphic Chart, will save us from our stagnated ways of being. As if Earth were to be hit with planetary Armageddon in two days, we will have had enough rationality to promote a new civilization on the moon. But this is just our pure paranoia, the paranoia of waiting, the paranoia of delayed agitation.

If only we can speak about it, and indeed we can, but when we speak it is all cacophony. We speak with logic: the logic of math, the logic of art, the logic of sciences. But is it logic if we can not even find, in the relation of distanced things, distanced human and distanced species, the very existence of logic? “Let nature speak!” we always say. But when it does, we snap, “Give back our planes!”. Within this void, fiction is the only possible dimension between cross-border agitations that doesn’t seem to reach our recognitions. Fiction is the bridge between what is visible and what is not, what is seemingly not relatable but could potential be the catalysts of each other’s cancellation. But fiction is fallible to manipulation because the physical and the emotional experience are not there in fiction to verify its gravity. To make fiction real is a question of morality. In fact, fiction should not be made real at all as the inflictions it gives, added by its absurdity, could be double or triple that of the real, which might be the end of life on Earth. Non-fiction fiction sounds like an effect of Disneyland that could bring even more illusions to problems but the possibility of invoking understanding by the hypothetical experience of the real could open door to a new awareness that, in a poetic and philosophical way, doesn’t necessary have to pass through the delirious use of fear and illusion as a device of power control.
Non-fiction fiction would be able to explain without words the “why”, the “how”, posed by critical thinkers, to the common public. To wonder:

Fish sauce and airplanes. Who would have thought, that such liquid, traveling on a high journey everyday to different continents, could provoke enough air pollution for a steel factory to send Vietnamese to England? Who would have thought?

Disasters. It covers all the characteristics of an awareness. It has graphic, it has sounds. It has physical impacts and it drives emotions to the extreme. Fear, worry, madness and anger. It throws over the senses we have of the world in seconds.

When talking about disasters, one must find the joy in watching what comes after. Is it the silver linings we always hear? The happy ending? A laughable thing? In the movie Melancholia by Lars von Trier, disaster is the perfect depiction of a minimal, non hyper-sensational piece of event. There were no humans falling from sky-scrapers, but there was also no mercy for the life of human after death. It a fiction that brings the meaning of our mortals conducts—from technology, to science, to business, to marriage, at disposal. We are sane if we oppose these dogmas.

“I understood the film as a competing set of epistemological claims—that’s to say, not only how do we know certain things, and what method do we used to know them, but also what we do with this knowledge once we have it. Von Trier is a well-documented sufferer of depression, but from a certain standpoint, depression does contain within it certain material truths; i.e., it isn’t merely pathological. So, for example, we know that the world will end, literally and physically (when Melancholia collides with the Earth it’s to all intents and purposes a “real” collision and not a merely symbolic or allegorical “end of the world”).

“Seen from enough of an objective standpoint (sub specie aeternitatis as Spinoza would have it) we know that actually “eternity” isn’t forever. Sooner or later, the Earth and all around it will cease to exist. While the heat death of the universe will in fact come after our own individual death, and probably even that of the species as a whole, it’s interesting to speculate on what this horizon of thought means: what, seen from a certain angle, does anything matter at all? Justine has two modes of nihilism: aggressive and passive, in that order. The former sees her question the “usual” structures: marriage, work, family responsibility. The latter sees her reconciled (albeit with a snarl) to the imminent destruction of the planet. These nihilisms can be seen as models of knowledge far more apt than the neurotic position held by Claire, or the economic–rational mode represented by John (”you have to trust the scientists”). So in that sense I agree that Justine is far “saner” than the rest of her family. The stilted conversations, apart from this presumably being much like the way bourgeois people actually communicate with one another, operate as so many incompatible world views. The objective fact that forces them all to focus their relative outlooks is also the revelation that almost all of these outlooks possess no adequate way to deal with Melancholia’s imminent arrival.”

Excerpt from Nina Power’s commentary on “Melancholia”

Say, disaster is still a joke, in blockbusters, in books, in TV shows, in theater plays, on radio, internet and so on. Disasters in the modern world exists too much in the fiction that it forgets the real, it does so only on the extremities: it either romanticizes or ridicules the real. The challenge is to find the in-between, to find a device to operate the non-fiction fiction, to find alternatives to perception. Invoking change to the human necessities, out of all means, could possibility leave the most impression in that sense. Necessities such as food, shelter, mobility, etc. are ideal materials for non-fiction fiction. Especially food, a survival item that is also an object of culture (seen in stores with beautiful packaging and a fat amount of variety), is a “fluid” material whose meaning plays on the field of emotion, memory, poetry, art, science and politics. In the realm of food, taste plays an important binder of all human senses. It encounters the world from a molecule level point of view to an abstract one. To taste means not only to use the organic device of the gustatory system to interact with food and its flavors but also to perceive and to memorize. Tasting connects the brain to every other parts of the body that triggers and links images to thought, which eventually will be encoded as information. As a binding element of the “outer” to the “inner”, tasting and perceiving can be interchanged to express the experience of both material and non-material matters, such as tasting music (one’s taste in music), tasting fashion (trends), tasting movies, tasting pain and tasting life. Tasting inedible things propose that we also experience them in a fictional way that in return triggers our senses. This parallels with the fictions in non-fictions. That fiction is the image, and tasting is non-fictional operation of it—the duality of the imagined and the real. As we read non-fiction fictions, we are simultaneously changing the meaning of this action, from symbolic representation to imaginable experience. To create the device of non-fiction fiction is to “taste” an alternative hypothesis of the world by bridging it with the perception of reality.

“A Climate Within was an international pre-terrorist group that operated in Northern Europe since November, Nineteen Sixty Three up until Two Thousand Six. Not much is known about them except for the literature they produced during a staggering forty three years, making them one of the few publishing terrorist groups and surely the most enduring. Despite having put an end to their activities and being generally considered as indefatigable charlatans, there are enough truthful anomalies in their story as to regard them as just plain liars.

“Initially perceived as feverish political insurgents and dangerous public agitators, the Icelandic authorities soon considered that the group was potentially harmless with a tendency to exaggerate their actual scope. Early investigations led the secret services to find out that the group had barely any financial support and no access whatsoever to fire weapons, ruling them out of the full-fledged terrorist list and confining them to a pre-category of the term. In addition, their claims were never taken too seriously as they fluctuated between euro-skepticism, sci-fi paraphernalia and a disturbing obsession for natural disasters.

“Curiously enough, Interpol insisted on regarding them as a serious public threat after they claimed responsibility for the Friuli earthquake that shook the Slovenian town of Gemona in Nineteen Seventy Three. It was not until twenty four years later, in Nineteen Ninety Seven, that chief Toshinori Kanemoto described them as a group of ‘annoying inoffensive lunatics’. Apparently, the publication of a series of dossiers explaining the Central European floods by means of their esoteric ability to travel through space and time, would have had a severe impact on the group’s credibility.

“As for their origins, local lore has it that a group of four geologists was seen in the town of Hvolsvöllur back in Nineteen Sixty Three, a week before the emergence of Surtsey island – an underwater volcanic eruption that took place twenty nautical miles off the southern coast of Iceland. They allegedly locked themselves in a rented house that belonged to local farmer Harald Vatunsen and had absolutely no contact with anyone else until they left for the emerging sulphuric island on November Fourteenth. According to locals they were never to be seen again, despite both the town council and the national geological society reporting their disappearance, and to this day the police has not filed any missing person reports by any relative.

“The group’s internal documents precisely point to this event as ‘the banishing’ since it represents their departure from conventional democratic values and the adoption of a terrorist narrative as a political grammar to their means. Apparently, the implications of being atop a newly emerged land persuaded them to think that cultural dissent could only be achieved effectively through the awakening of floating territories. Destructive natural phenomena seemed to be specially effective in raising an abstract political awareness and so they decided to commit themselves to the incitement of climate mayhem. The tragic power of this catastrophes was double: on the one hand they were effective on a continental level reaching many at once, while on the other the absence of authorship avoided the accusation and further violence that follows a violent paramilitary act, since there was no one to counter-strike.

“Although there’s no direct evidence on what the group thought of the innocent casualties caused by natural disasters, they do refer to the term sacrifice as inevitable. From their initial articles it would seem that they would always avoid harming anyone while setting up their activation devices, but once this was done they too became potential victims of the induced disaster and, according to their own words, left ‘no foreseeable culprit’. Their records describe this task as ‘a progressive breed of the supernatural that exceeds us all’ and dissect its anatomy into four areas or ‘worlds’ (sic). These worlds would take the name of Jupiter’s Galilean satellites, namely Io, Ganimedes, Calisto and Europa – possibly reminding us the trouble the Italian astronomer had when convincing his contemporaries of the wonders he had seen through the lens – and each of them would correspond to a different set of missions or ‘attacks on natural instabilities’ with the purpose of ‘inoculating the earth’s mantle with a renewed passion in its own fictitious rendering.’”

Excerpt from “A Climate Within” by Pavla Ascher.

It is hard to imagine the eradication of a world runs by illusions, invisibility, “flights” and fictions. Sadly it is the world we live in. And much more sadly, we have not moved very far from our past mistakes.

- the force of the four factors is circulating in tight bonds
- the people who evolves into short-span thinkers
- the uni-dimensional decisions in quarantine
- the free market and the free ocean
- the automated yawning to marginalized violence
- rehabilitation of the idea of the “far”
- technology as lullaby
- the echo chambers in the digital screen
- delayed temporality, atemporality
- nation specific issues and contemporary borderless crisis
- connectivity rather than collectivity
- a delirium of visions, realistic and absurd
- democratization of megalomania

Ending illusions, invisibility, “flights” and pulp fictions means that we are accepting layers, explosions, alternatives, and non-fictions fictions.