March Roundup: What Evidence of Us Will Remain?
Newsletter 030 -- sharing my love of indie magazines. Haiti, for example. TikTok ripple effect.
Welcome back!
Earlier this month I came across a post on Instagram that said, “There is a possibility that we could know more about the 1980’s than the 2020’s because of how much is now documented primarily digitally and on privately owned platforms.” The post references how after Vice Media shut down, all of their articles were deleted from the internet. The implication is that in the future there may not be (or, more accurately, there will be a very small amount of) media or content available for future generations to access and learn about important historical events like COVID-19, global conflicts, etc. that have occurred in the last decade or more.
823 started as a small independent magazine. I love the indie magazine world — particularly the freedom, artistry, and thoughtfulness I find in the pages of these magazines. I knew I wanted 823 to become a reference material people would have access to in the future, this is why it entered the world in printed form. Migrating to a digital platform made the most sense as the world was moving and changing rapidly. Every newsletter we’ve written, and every wonderful subscriber we have is allowed to be a part of this online Substack community, so long as Substack exists. Even though I gave up some of the agency and creative freedom I enjoyed with a printed magazine, a digital platform has allowed me to exponentially extend the life of 823, as well as its mission and purpose. The looming US ban on TikTok is a sobering reality that should make us all consider what tangible “backups” we want to leave behind to tell our story. The work of writers, podcasters, filmmakers, creatives, and their audiences are all online or on privately owned platforms. And if, one day, these companies or platforms decide to change their business model or cease to exist, what becomes of all the cultural material we’ve created on them?
Read on!
» The Power of Print
In protest of the war in Gaza, the independent magazine, Real Review, did not include a single photo to accompany its stories in their most recent issue which covers the war. Each Real Review issue explores topics around its stated focus: “What it means to live today”. As an avid consumer of independent magazines, what draws me to publications like these is the creative storytelling and artful curation of imagery accompanying them. Unlike larger magazines where the imagery serves a commercial purpose, independent magazines as a whole are intended to be evocative and connect readers around niche topics of shared interests. Independent magazines don’t have to be prescriptive in their makeup, allowing them to create their own parameters and stylization in their storytelling and overall construction. This is why they’re the perfect platform through which readers can engage in literary protest and subversion. My interpretation of the Real Review’s protest message breaks down into a few layers: the first layer, as mentioned in the video review, is the disorientation and sense of loss readers feel flipping through the issue, observing all of the empty space. The keen sense that “something tangible is missing” is an astute observation of the empty pages, but more relevantly, of the destroyed Gazan landscape today. The next layer was my investigation of the anarchic purpose of including text to describe the images that presumably would have filled the white space. While reading the descriptions of horrific imagery, it's not difficult to conjure up these pictures in our minds. This was the most striking confrontation for me — due to my consistent exposure to, and the mass proliferation of, devastating images of Gaza and Gazans during this brutal war, I was able to, with a simple description of an image, accurately reconfigure the image. The same ones we have all seen over and over again for months. I found this reflex deeply troublesome. It unmasked the level of inundation I’ve had with the violent death-imageries, and how insidiously prevalent these images are. This leads me to the final layer of protest messaging I think the Real Review was trying to engage readers in: because we’ve normalized our mass consumption of horrifically violent images, we feel as though we need this imagery, and dare I say, want it, when we’re flipping or scrolling through media like this. The expectation of imagery no matter how gruesome or violent, emphasizes the sick depravity of the expectation itself. The direct protest being made with this most recent issue of Real Review, is their desire to protect the humanity of Gazan’s whose heightened visibility at this moment has not translated to tangible help in stopping the cycle of death and destruction they’re experiencing. Creatively, they were able to make an issue that was extremely affecting for the reader. — Alexis
The War Time Magazine Reaching New Readers
“It gives a totally fascinating insight into his experience of the war, at a time when right-wing extremists are on the rise again here in Germany and populism is growing everywhere.” — Thilo von Debschitz
Het Onderwater Cabaret is a handmade poetry magazine created by Curt Bloch, a Jewish man who went into hiding across Europe, between the 1930s and 1940s. Bloch wrote poems about his experience living under Nazi control, politics, and the important figures of the time. He fashioned collaged covers for his zine with whatever materials were available to him in hiding. Over the course of the war, Bloch created 96 issues and wrote 492 poems to fill its pages. Recently, Bloch’s daughter found his zines and has decided to share them with the public. This story is evidence of how indispensable printed, tangible materials are to our ability to learn, know, and remember history. At a time when most of our contemporary history, “artifacts”, and memories exist online, it is worrisome to think about whether our digital catalogs of memories will still exist decades from now, or whether we will have access to them. What evidence will we have to show future generations? TikTok content creators are wondering what will happen to their content if the US decides to ban the app. It may look similar to what happened when users migrated from Myspace to Facebook, and then to Instagram. In some cases, content, and our memories, might still be accessible to us. In the case of TikTok, it may not be. — Alexis
And Do Not Hinder Them
The Children’s Movement (CM) in South Africa was started by a group of anti-apartheid organizers in 1979 to facilitate the development of the youth population’s critical thought at ages where this development is most important. Leaders of the anti-apartheid community were concerned about how the youth were processing all that it meant to live under apartheid and how their circumstances would affect them long-term. They observed and analyzed the fluctuating lives of Black children during this liminal time and saw that the children of South Africa were living in a world that made it difficult for them to be and become, healthy, independent, and caring people. This was the impetus for CM: a collective that established programming to engage and support children living under apartheid in South Africa. The organization had an official newsletter called “Voice of the Children” or “Iswi Labantwana” in which kids interpreted and expressed their thoughts about the world around them. The newsletter gave kids a public platform to connect and become socially engaged. It offered them a sense of control over their representation in the public and in the media. Kids who contributed to the newsletter learned how to observe and question what was happening around them. Because the newsletter was disseminated across the country by mail and through moms, teachers, and the kids themselves, it widened their community and allowed kids to engage in knowledge transfer with each other. Between 1986 and 2017, the organization published 75 issues, with writing on topics such as human rights, child abuse, and housing. Kids are often overlooked as agents of action in times of turmoil and political upheaval. Unfortunately, the conditions of our times still warrant nurturing these skills among our young population. Writing requires empathy, deep observational skills, and an understanding of your own positionality. This makes it a great way for kids to be engaged in society, feel like they have agency, and build a sense of selfhood. — Alexis
» Technological Sovereignty
TikTok is in Trouble in the US and Europe
On March 13th, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would remove TikTok from app stores unless the company’s US operations are sold to a non-Chinese parent company. This article discusses the technical realities of a TikTok ban, but I’ve been thinking about what kind of secondary implications the ban will have on our very online society. The technological, legal, and social changes to our online landscape will be unavoidable should this ban pass. Because of the TikTok case, legislators are renegotiating how they want to approach issues around tech regulation generally. In the 1990s their focus was on expanding First Amendment rights online and granting platforms protections and liability around the content they hosted on their platforms. Now, it seems legislators are focused on user experience and believe companies should be regulated to offer users more protections. If Bytedance (TikTok’s parent company) is forced to sell TikTok, tech observers say it could trigger economic tensions. US rivals and allies could force US companies to sell their local operations or transfer their technology to foreign firms in order to operate in their country. WhatsApp and Instagram (whose parent company is US-based Meta) are the two most downloaded apps in markets outside of the US. More than half of Meta’s revenue came from countries outside of North America last year. In the last three months, tech professionals note that 26 of the 100 most downloaded apps in the US are owned by foreign companies. For example, Shein, CapCut, and Temu are all owned by China-based companies. Foreign app developers are concerned that if the bill passes, it could give the US the power to unilaterally ban apps without sufficient evidence that they pose a threat to its national security (this is the concern being levied against TikTok). People opposing the ban say that these dominos will ultimately lead to the “unintended” (we shouldn’t rule out that this might be a little intended) rollback of internet freedoms long-term. — Alexis
» Haiti, As A Playbook
“The reason I say that Haiti’s a laboratory is because this is the first coup d'etat sanctioned by the UN… And, so, the UN occupation of Haiti, through the core group that is multinational, multiracial, it almost seems as if this is a humanitarian effort as opposed to a coup d'etat that has been successful. The whole world is participating in the occupation of Haiti unwittingly… and this is how we have to remember the US will work. They will use their proxies to do the dirty work for them.” — Jemima Pierre author of Empire’s Laboratory
— Alexis
(On the 2010 election)
Jake Johnston: But what [the US government] ended up doing, without any full recount of the votes, without any statistical analysis of the 20% of the vote that never even showed up at the tabulation center, is they just changed the results and they took the government preferred candidate out and they put this…ostensible newcomer to Haitian politics, popular musician, Michel Martelly, into the all-important second round vote and he eventually went on to win the presidency.
Ryan Grim: This was Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton’s candidate?
Johnston: I’d say this, I think there are often crimes of opportunity, and so whether this was their candidate from the beginning or whether…
Grim: This is a guy we can do business with.
Johnston: Exactly…This was a time where there was a lot of celebrity interest in Haiti. You had big-name Hollywood stars showing up on the ground. [Sean Penn] later became the ambassador at large for the Martelly government…and Martelley was a showman, that’s his background, he's a stage persona, and I think he played into that really well and fooled a lot of people.
— Alexis
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In Solidarity,
823 Team