• As cultural agents, curators and artists participate in the production of cultural value. Exhibitions are, therefore, contemporary forms of rhetoric, complex expressions of persuasion, whose strategies aim to produce a prescribed set of values and social relations for their audiences. [Paul O'Neill]
• Exhibition: maximizing the shock while avoiding the risk of boredom, which would strip of its entertainment value. [Paul O'Neill]
• What is apparent is that artists, their work and practices exist and are claimed under the banner of a larger economy of culture. [Alun Rowlands]

• Classical system theory, basically maths.
• Computerization and simulation using models.
• Compartment theory: “the system consists in subunits with certain boundary conditions between which transport process takes place”.
• Set theory, which studies general formal properties of systems.
• Graph theory concerned with topological space.
• Net theory, a generalisation of sequences (http://en.allexperts.com/e/n/ne/net_(mathematics).htm).
• Cybernetics: “A theory of control systems based on communication (transfer of information) between system and environment and within the system, and control (feedback) of the system’s function in regard to environment.”
• Information theory “is based on the concept of information, defined by an expression isomorphic to negative entropy of thermodynamics”.
• Theory of automata (i.e. abstract machine – Turing machine 1936).
• Game theory which studies systems animated by rational players.
• Decision theory: maths about choices over alternatives.
• Queuing theory: optimization of arrangements under conditions of crowding.

• that stand up the experience of reality
• that everybody sees
• that resist being pushed
• that are not affected by how you think about them
• …

Read in “Thought as a System” by David Bohm – 1992.

In his book “Vinyl Leaves, Walt Disney World and America”, Stephen M. Fjellman analyses Disney World and how it incarnates a postmodern society based on consumerism. Here is a summary of his thoughts.

In the introduction, Mr. Fjellman makes a reference to the book “Brave New World” from Aldous Huxley. The book describes an utopian dictatorship of happiness. “A good way to make sure that people police themselves is to get them to believe essentially the same stories about what the world is and why the way it is is good, true and beautiful. The world needs to be described, and it needs to be justified by arguments about nature, philosophical principle, history, or the gods. People will find their place in such a world. They will learn what hopes they might reasonably hold for themselves.” The argument of Mr. Fjellman is that it is exactly what our society is trying to achieve, not necessary consciously, but as a matter of fact. His description of Disney World might seem harsh, but it doesn’t contain any anger – the author seems actually to be a fan of Disney World – it is just a realistic description from an anthropologist point of view, not trying to point out guilty corporations, but just stating the facts and how society works.

A Disney shop

Disney is a major corporation that has a vested interest in promoting a consumerist society. Disney World is not merely a collection of fantasies for children, it is actively advocating the utopia of happy consumerism.  “Our lives can only be well lived (or live at all) through the purchase of commodities. As the commodity form becomes a central part of culture, so culture becomes available for use in the interest of commodification, as a legitimation for the entire system. We must be taught that it is good, reasonable, just, and natural that the means necessary for life are available only through the market”.  In this context, here is how Disney world is defined: “Walt Disney World produces, packages and sells experiences and memories as commodities.” Visitors know that when going in Disney World, they get into a place where all their activities are controlled and conditioned (e.g. queues, soundtracks all over the parks, visual magnets like the Cinderella castle) . They know that their experiences and souvenirs will be manufactured and probably not so different from the ones of another visitor. But they still buy the package because they know they will get a very enjoyable experience.

Queues in the Epcot Test Track ride sponsored by GM

Stephen M. Fjellman notices the following:

• Rides are often experiences during which the visitors are inactive. The only way for visitors to do something, take part in the magic, is at the exit, when they land to the souvenir shops. What is purchased then is not only the souvenir, but the only mean for the visitor to take an active part in the magical experience.
• The sentence “If we can dream it, we can do it” from the EPCOT Future world is ambiguous. Who is the ‘we’? Mr. Fjellman argues that the first ‘we’ means us, but that the second one most probably means ‘corporations’. EPCOT is promoting the pursue of new technologies for human good (if not, goods), but even if we dream it, most of us will not build the new technologies, only the corporations having the ability to do so will. So, the message is actually to trust corporations and their technologies.
• Often at Disney World, rides about the future are actually about the past future: the future as it was imagined few decades ago (e.g. space mountain, Spaceship earth). This paradox is tolerated by the otherwise perfectionism of the Disney imagineers because it achieves one objective: provide reasonable credibility to the statement that corporate technology is good for humanity.  Real future technologies are too controversial, old ones are better suited.
• Animatronics are part of the Disney World experience since its creation. Why are they so important to Disney? The idea to imitate humans with robots could be seen as frightening. But again, the goal of Disney is to promote industrial consumerism. Many of its rides are sponsored by corporations such as GM, Exxon and Kraft. All are heavily involved in high technology. So, the human face of animatronics and their harmless appearance makes technology friendly and acceptable to consumers.
• The Disney movies and the Disney rides often alternate scaring or frightening scenes with cute and happy ones. Bruno Bettelheim made the point that this technique used in fairytales is useful for the kids education, it is a “symbolic presentation of difficult and dangerous psychosocial contradictions”. But the goal of Disney is not to educate kids, it is to make money.  Scaring children to then make them happier is a good way to sell more cinema tickets and merchandising .

Vinyl leaves from Animal Kingdom

How come these kind of messages are not consciously detected by visitors? According to the book, it is thanks to cognitive overload and decontextualization.

• Someone is constantly overloaded by stimuli in Disney World, “it is with the overriding of visitors’ capacities for making discriminations that Disney metathemes may take effect.”
• Disney World is a patchwork of enchanted medieval castles, colonial history, future technologies, Moroccan markets, zoos, characters from Disney cartoons, American presidents, rides sponsored by car manufacturers, Mt Everest, astronomy, dinosaurs and so on. It is the world summarized. But the trick is that if you remove an element from its context, it loses a lot of its meaning. “By pulling meanings out of their contexts and repackaging them in bounded informational packets, decontextualization makes it difficult for people to maintain a coherent understanding about how things work.” It is then easier to tell the Disney history: “Idealized United States as heaven, history is decoration. Colonialism was fun, the colonized cute (but a little stupid). How nice if they could all be like us – with kids, a dog, and GE appliances – in a world whose only problems are avoiding Captain Hook, the witch’s apple.”
• “The Disney strategy is to juxtapose the real and the fantastic (real birds mixed with fake sounds of birds), surrounding us with the mix until it becomes difficult to tell which is which.  A kind of euphoric disorientation is supposed to set in as we progressively accept the Disney definition of things. We are asked to submit to a wilful suspension of disbelieve in the ostensible interest of a complete entertainment experience.”

I personally love Disney world. I agree with the analysis of Mr. Fjellman, but after all, this is not so shocking for someone already leaving in such a consumerist society. What is much more worrying is the trend to build everything like Disney World: hotels, cities, even museums. The risk is to forget that Disney World is only one vision of an utopian society of happiness, a corporate one. Life is so much more than that.

Do you think this article is fair to Disney World? Would you like to defend the park against some of the claims made here? Or do you think the reality is even darker?

The Tour Eiffel from the World's Fair of 1900

I’ve read recently the excellent book from Jay Winter “Dreams of Peace and Freedom – Utopian Moments in the 20^th Century“. It is part of my curatorial homework for the exhibition “Living the Dream of Modernity” that I’m preparing to launch very soon. Here is a summary.

Mr. Winter understands utopia as a discourse in two contradictory parts. An utopia is an ideal in complete discontinuity with the reality. But the ideal can only be expressed with what is known. Thus, the utopia necessary tells about the historical context of its authors. “Utopia is a fantasy about the limits of the possible, a staging of what we take for granted, what is left unsaid about our current social conventions and political cultures. Those who expose these silences, often playfully, begin to disturb the contradictions in the way we live.” [Louis Marin, Utopiques]

The book focuses on the loosely defined ‘minor utopias’, the utopias that have not been the cause of major wars and cruelty, e.g. 20^th century totalitarian regimes.

Jay Winter identifies  the following utopias:

-          Visions of Peace in 1900. Throughout the world, many groups declared their commitment to the idea that war could be eradicated. 3 examples:

o   Albert Kahn created the “Archives of the Planet”, films and photographs from many parts of the world, to help people “see that their interests should be directed towards the benefit of humanity as a whole. For this they need more than abstract knowledge, but contact with the world. This contact will show the variety of experience and contradict simple formula about the world”

o   The world’s fair of 1900 in Paris, based on the idea that war would be unnecessary in a world based on international commerce.

o   Jean Jaurès and socialist pacifism took the opposite direction, peace was impossible under a system defending property and privilege. A system of states resting on class inequalities would necessary clash.

All those visions were unlikely to materialize, “because the men and women who framed them could not evade who they were: European citizens of an imperial system controlling the globe, a system about to detonate the most devastating war in history”.

-          Perpetual Peace in 1919. After the first World War, long-lasting peace was still the primordial goal. The conviction was that self-determination would put this time a definitive end to war. Self-determination is the capability for “people to determine their political future in their own territory. Take away the imperial element in international affairs, and armed conflict would simply be unnecessary”. It was in the agenda of the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 but was still the prerogative of the imperial countries. You cannot be imperial and democratic at the same time.

-          The illuminations of 1937. The hope of the Paris world’s fair of 1937 was that science and technology would make humanity progress cooperatively. Democratizing light and electricity was the perfect symbolic: a materialization of the 18^th century enlightenment. Meanwhile, science was playing a central role in the military preparation of the second World War.  The fair was in fact a desperate invocation, signs of its fate are greatly detailed in the book.

-          The work of René Cassin on the Declaration of Human Rights, in the middle of the second World War, seems like a paradox. “But utopias have the tendency to appear at the worst times, when they are the least likely to be realized”. The declaration was motivated by the believe that peace could be secured only if it was based on a set of international commitments on human rights. States respecting the rights of their citizen would not be willing to go to war so easily.

-          Liberation of the 1968. Jay Winter describes a shift in this period during which the ideal of individual freedom takes over the one of collective independence (e.g. states, trade unions). He describes the liberation theology school funded by Gustavo Gutiérrez as well as the student revolts in Paris and Berlin. Came from those movements the notion of ‘autogestion’, people can solve their problems without national governments (e.g. life in small communities, humanitarian organizations such as Medecins sans frontieres). A chapter is also dedicated to the Prague Spring and the theatre of Vaclav Havel.

-          Global citizenship in 1992. “Global citizens are emerging out of an array of transnational social forces animated by environmental concerns, human rights, hostility to patriarchy, and a vision of human community based on the unity of diverse cultures seeking an end to poverty, oppression, humiliation, and collective violence.” [Richard Falk] Even though the importance of this movement is undeniable, most of international institutions are still the result of cooperation between nations, far from being bypassed.

The book was very useful to read. It helps having a minimum of historical context on utopias and to understand how come such obvious things such as international corporations, Human rights, the European Union and Greenpeace exist.

Jay Winter manages to stay very detailed and neutral when describing the utopias and why they were biased, while still being an advocate of them. All the utopias described above played an important role in history and how we perceive the world today. They are the result of individuals still being able to envision a world beyond the injustices and atrocities of their times. Without them, no progress would have been possible.

Maybe this definition of strategic thinking is too narrow, I think for example that fighting climate change requires strategic thinking, even though it doesn’t involve an adversary trying to do the same. This disagreement apart, the book is very useful. It presents simple and not so simple examples of game theory which really enlighten us on the way our societies practically work.

The palmery of Zagora in Morocco

I was reading the “Making innovation work” book from Davila – Epstein – Shelton and I thought it would be interesting to apply its business innovation observations to broader fields such as the fight against global warming. Here is a quick introduction to the innovation basics using environmental examples.

Environmental challenges require surely radical innovation: radical in terms of the technologies used but also radical on how societies can change the way they generate value, without degrading their natural resources. In that respect, institutions have to adopt a Play-to-Win strategy, one in which innovation is central for survival. A Play-Not-to-Loose strategy is not the solution even though it looks simpler to implement: incremental changes in our behaviors and technologies will not suffice alone. The planet is acting like a market dictating our little human start-up (compare to the Earth history) its conditions of survival, and times are not in status quo.

The next step once you defined your innovation strategy is to design a balanced innovation portfolio: a selection of innovative projects that are relevant for the organization’s objectives, that distribute the risks in terms of size, time to market, potential return on investment. We have many options on the table: solar technologies, nuclear technologies, energy saving tactics for example. They each have their own risks, challenges, state of maturity. Some will fail, some will perform better than expected, and some will provide little improvements. Proper environmental management is not to bet on the right technologies but to distribute wisely risks and investments.  Solar panels are at a very different stage of maturity than nuclear fusion power for example. One requires incremental innovations and should be ready in few years; the other still requires radical innovation for long term benefits.

An important principle of innovation is to accept failures. Innovation is by nature risky and not all your projects will succeed. Furthermore, successful innovation might be achieved at the cost of the experience gained on failed ones. As a citizen, I should thus not look for the cleanest energy. I should instead be willing to fund experimental new sources of energies. Some of them will not be viable and it is fine. The mission of the institutions shouldn’t be to predict the successful ones but to create the networks which will encourage new initiatives. I’m not sure this is the way we think today, the public wants certitudes. This has to change if we want innovation to happen.

Now, how green innovation should be organized? The book proposes several tactics. One is to create innovation platforms: organizational units covering one or several business units. In the example of environmental governance, they can be platforms having ramifications in local governments, departments of trade, industry and environment. They should have their own innovation boards, budgets and resources. Another organizational option is to create a kind of venture capital within the institutions which could sponsor innovation using the resources made available. In both cases, the key is to promote innovation and prevent departments to develop ‘antibodies’ which naturally attack any risky initiatives. Who are the leaders of those platforms in your local institutions? If you don’t know, that maybe means there is a problem in the strategy to address global warming.

How to make sure your institutions follow a Play-to-Win strategy? The book describes a lot of metrics that can be applied. Here are few examples:

• number of strategic commercial alliances
• number of new patents granted each year by universities in sustainable energies
• motivation of institution and government staffs for innovation
• innovation credentials of the new recruits
• …

Maybe all those methods are already in place in your institutions, maybe not. If you don’t know, maybe it is because the media don’t pay much attention to the innovative framework in place to tackle the challenges our planet is facing. I think the public should be educated not only to look at the results of institutional actions, like if they were only consumers, but should also be treated as shareholders interested in knowing what structure is in place. How your institutions perform in terms of green innovation, how well their innovation portfolio is balanced, how do they make sure innovation is a priority? After all, the central question is to know if our institutions embrace the culture and values of our societies.